


If I Made You My Religion, Would You Still Be So Kind?

by Riffir



Series: Avengers Related Fics [2]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: M/M, Not Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Compliant, Not Phase Two compliant, but this will continue soon, have to edit some, not Fury's Big Week or any other comic compatible, some chapters are being rewritten a bit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-07-27
Updated: 2014-08-02
Packaged: 2017-11-10 20:27:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 45,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/470351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Riffir/pseuds/Riffir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Behind the Scenes of the Forming of the Avengers, or What SHIELD Agents Do to Make the Avengers Initiative work.</p><p>Sometimes it's complete bullshit. Clint will be the first one to tell you so. </p><p> </p><p>My take on Clint/Coulson before and aftermath of "The Avengers." Originally named "A Train Wreck of Lipstick."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Train Wreck Of Lipstick

When Clint opened his eyes, the small apartment smelled like coffee and turpentine. Which wasn’t totally unusual; both he and Coulson lived on coffee as though it were the nectar of the gods, and really, the worst ops were the ones where they were stranded in some small, hole-in-the-wall sort of place without a decent Starbucks, or at least some local place that knew a good brew if it bit them in the ass. But this was heavenly--pure Columbian, strong, hearty-- and it drew Clint out of bed like one of those old cartoons where the scent of good food led the unsuspecting buffoon by the nose.

Or maybe he just rolled over, said “murgle,” and stumbled his way toward the door like a zombie with a broken leg. In either case, there was coffee, black as obsidian and strong as brimstone, just waiting to be poured and caressed and loved like the wonderful beautiful creation it was. Clint poured a mug full, held the cup beneath his nose, and inhaled. He sighed in pleasure, then tipped his head back, ignoring the scalding sensation at the back of his throat for the more pleasant sensation of coffee going straight into his gullet.

There was also Coulson in the kitchen, his own mug of coffee on the plywood table in front of him, a sheaf of papers splayed out against the grainy wood. “One of these days I’m going to record you doing that,” he said mildly.

“Why? Is there a form for that?” Clint smirked and dropped his face for a quick kiss before hoping up to perch on the counter. The corner of Coulson’s mouth twitched upward, which was akin to a full-body laugh. Clint grinned, and swung his legs slowly as he cradled the mug between both hands. “What are you working on, anyway? I thought today was your day off?”

It’d been a rare cold day in the hell that was their relationship that they’d both managed to get a day with no obligations, no missions, no travel plans or debriefs, no one trying to destroy the world, or the economy or upset some world power hierarchy in a way that only SHIELD could deal with. Clint had done the math (he could be persuaded to do so, given the appropriate incentive), had known this day was coming, and had been looking forward to it for months.

“It is,” Coulson closed the folder and leaned back in his chair. “Or it was supposed to be,” he amended with a quiet sigh. “Instead, I’m trying to patch together the history of one Natalie Rushman.”

Clint frowned for a moment before the pieces fell into place. Natalie Rushman. NR. Nat R.

Natasha. “That’s not the most original of cover names, sir.” Which was a bad sign. Obvious cover names-- the ones that stood out like brick dust against concrete, that practically guaranteed to bleed, were always a bad sign.

Coulson shrugged. “It’s the one she chose. We’re sending her in undercover to deal with the Iron Man incident.”

Clint lifted an eyebrow and sipped on his coffee. Now that he was more awake, he could tell that the pot had been sitting for a while, cooler than it usually was when fresh brewed. It was also twice as strong. He wondered how long Coulson had been awake; his handler had the rare ability to slip out of bed undetected. Not that it would have been hard; Clint had stumbled home late last night, still smelling of the pressurized air from the red eye flight and feeling as though he’d been run through a chipper. “Undercover? What, is she supposed to be some intern or something like that?”

Coulson shook his head. “No. The rumor mill has it that Stark is stepping down as CEO of his company in favor for Ms. Potts. He’ll need a new assistant, someone who is capable, efficient, can handle anything thrown at her.” Someone who was Pepper Potts, apparently.

Therefore, the Black Widow. Because Stark’s reputation for enjoying pretty and needing efficient ensured that Natasha would probably be a shoe in. However, it was that reputation-- chrome-covered and larger than life-- that was the biggest issue of all. “Well, shit.” Clint closed his eyes. His fingers traced around the rim of his coffee mug, stalling at the sticky-sweet residue of saliva his mouth had left. “How did Nat respond?” He didn’t need to outline it for Coulson. Any spy--any handler-- could tell what an assignment shaped like Stark meant.

Telling Natasha that they needed her to go undercover to be Tony Stark’s new assistant would have been one of the hardest that Coulson would ever have to do. Not because it was hard or life-threatening, but because of what it would mean. For better or worse, this assignment meant that things were changing. She would never again be the unknown spy, the shadow in the night, the face that no one could match. By becoming Natalie Rushman, becoming anything in Tony Stark’s world, she would gain instant notoriety. The man was well known for his trysts with women and had fansites dedicated to everything from his cars to what sort of watches he wore; there was no way Natasha was going to manage to stay under the radar with this one.

“She was… unimpressed.” Coulson decided on after a long moment of consideration. “She knows what this means, and she’s still willing to go with it.

Clint dropped his head back against the cabinet behind him and gazed up at the ceiling. “And SHIELD is willing to scrap years of work for this Initiative?” Years of work, years of tears, sweat and blood, of ops gone bad and successful missions, of nights spent laying with each other and lying to each other. All for the idea that only by sacrificing everything could you have anything. “All due respect, sir, but that’s bullshit.”

It was bullshit for a lot a different reasons. Because Natasha could never be the same spy. Because all these personalities would clash with one another, could hate and disdain each other. They were even considering criminals, men who were locked away deep in the SHIELD cages. As if they could control such creatures. Clint knew more than he should, knew that the Council were considering each meta-human, weighing them all together, but they didn’t -- couldn’t-- know what he and the other agents of SHIELD knew. It didn’t matter what tests were run, or what analysis were made. No superhero worked well with another one.

And if he were truly being honest, he’d admit that there was also a certain amount of nostalgia. Nat would be moving on, to better things surely, but Clint could still remember those cold nights in Russia, the hard times in Budapest, and the staggering loneliness that came when Clint heard another woman’s voice on the comm and realized that it wasn’t Natasha.

Coulson shrugged and began gathering up his files. “It wasn’t my call to make. In any case, I’m due at the warehouse in about half an hour to start working on Agent Romanov’s back-story.” He tapped the files into a neat pile before shifting them to the crook of his arm. “Eat some breakfast; it’s not healthy to start the day on coffee alone.”

Clint took another long swallow and gave a lazy salute. “Aye, aye, black pot.” Which was entirely fair; Coulson had probably been up doing paper work for hours and had nothing but an entire pot of coffee to fuel him. Medical had probably been onto him about upcoming physicals, which really only meant that Clint needed to bribe someone into hacking the system to bypass him. “What does a warehouse have to do with Nat’s back-story?” he asked, genuinely curious.

Coulson sighed. “SHIELD did some research about the type of woman Stark would be interested in. Other than “attractive,” anyways. The analysts came up with ‘efficient,’ ‘capable,’ ‘steady’.”

Clint nodded, sagely. “Tasha is all of those things. The analysts have done well, grasshopper,”

Coulson rolled his eyes. “They also came up with ‘tall,’ but we’re out of luck there.”

“Well, you can’t always get what you want.” Not even when the ‘you’ in question was Tony Stark. “But I still don’t see what that has to do with a warehouse.”

“The other thing that the analysts came up with is ’model.’

Clint considered for a moment. He vaguely remembered some chatter about how Stark had gone twelve-for-twelve with all the Playboy models in one year, and knew from various newspapers and magazines on long cross-continental flights that Stark constantly had some piece of arm-candy about him at all times. “Wait a moment. You mean Nat’s actually going to model. As in, become girly, take pictures, pout at the camera? No CGI, or stand-ins, or anything?”

Coulson sighed again. “I knew I shouldn’t have told you.”

Well, that was true enough; even Clint could recognize that. “It’s like Christmas come early. Only with more death and destruction waiting to happen.” His mug hit the tabletop with a thud and he leapt to his feet. “What are we waiting for? These photographers have a schedule, you know. You shouldn’t keep the talent waiting.”

Coulson leveled him with a look. It was nowhere near his on-op glare that meant ‘shut up and do what I say, or you’ll be doing paperwork for a month,’ so Clint figured he was pretty much in the clear. “You aren’t going. It’s a closed set,” his mouth twisted slightly as he said it.

“Of course I am, sir." Watching Nat get made over like a starlet? Priceless, regardless of how he felt about the whole thing. He herded Coulson out the door, only pausing once they were outside and Coulson was locking up. “So what, is this the full thing? Hair, make-up, lots of assistants running around, all worrying about Nat getting her latte and salad at the right time?”

Coulson shook his head. “Just the photographer. Agent Romanoff refused the stylists.”

“Doing it herself?” It sounded enough like Nat.

“No. She said she knew someone.”

~~~

It wasn’t as if Clint didn’t understand the importance of the Avengers Initiative. He did. And he knew why Coulson was the one setting it up, and he knew why Natasha, who was admittedly one of the best assets that SHIELD had, was involved. But it didn’t mean he had to like it. Because it would change everything, and not just for the better.

The warehouse was located a few miles outside New York, far enough away that the flush of people had dwindled dramatically. It was practically empty, save for an area with cameras and lights that must be for the actual photo shoot and another, well lit spot that had mirrors and clothes surrounding it.

Coulson had just pulled the door shut behind them when his phone chirped. He pulled it out, and made a face at the screen. “I have to take this. I’ll catch up in a moment.”

Clint nodded. Natasha sat before one of the mirrors, her hair styled away from her face so that it tumbled in red waves down her shoulders. She wore a fluffy white bathrobe that made her look remarkably well padded and almost domestic, while a thin woman leaned over her, wearing a suit with hair so short that it almost looked buzzed. Off to the side, a photographer fondled his camera, crooning and caressing the hunk of plastic intimately. “No problem. I’ll just go join them.”

For a moment, Coulson looked like he wanted to say something. Then his phone chirped again, and the moment was lost, dissolved in the humid air and unexpected heat of the room. “I’ll join you soon,” he reiterated before stepping outside.

Clint nodded once to the empty air where he’d been, then strode across the room to Natasha and her impromptu make-up artist. “Nat, looking prettier than usual.”

Natasha opened her eyes briefly, then closed them again. “Oh, good,” she deadpanned, “Coulson brought you.” Beside her, the make-up artist shushed her and started painting her lips in a color that reminded Clint of blood. He glanced at her in surprise.

“Agent Raylan.” The agent didn’t turn toward him, but Clint could see the uplifted eyebrow gracing the corner of her face. “I didn’t know the intel unit was involved in this.”

Raylan snorted as she carefully outlined Natasha’s lips. “I’m not; in fact, this is my day off.” Apparently, SHIELD gave days off in bushels, letting every agent off on the same day. It seemed to be working well for them; Clint could count at least two who were doing something useful (he refused to consider himself; after all, he was just along for the ride). “I’m just here as a favor to Agent Romanoff.”

“Of course.” Natasha’s eyes slid open, as if daring him to comment. He ignored the obvious favor jokes for a more important question. “How do you know how to do…” he gestured to the two of them, the make-up and the outfits; Natasha, poised and patient and Raylan, painting on a disguise as if she were about to sneak into some secure location. “…this, anyway?”

The corner of Raylan’s mouth twitched up into a smile, though her gaze never left Nat’s face. She was a plain woman, androgynous and unremarkable. She blended into any crowd with ease. “I was an art major in college,” she said simply. Clint believed her. He’d heard the rumors about how she could fool the facial recognition programs using eyeliner alone.

There were so many reasons he loved working at SHIELD. That they had agents who could get him in and out of countries he had a death sentence in by simply painting his face was only a minor issue. Raylan worked as a handler for several assets, including Natasha some of the time (Clint had often joked that Raylan and Coulson shared custody of a couple of agents. So far, no one else seemed to enjoy the joke).

Across the room, the photographer left off messing with his camera to shout at Natasha, waving her toward the lighted mats with way too much impatience for a man who’d just spent the past five minutes talking to his camera. Natasha sighed and stood. Her hands went to the tie of the white bathrobe, and as it fell to the floor, so did Clint’s jaw followed. Apparently, the analysts had done more than find out what type of woman Tony Stark liked, they’d also studied what sort of lingerie he liked. Natasha had always been pretty curvy, but this was ridiculous; a lacy, sheer black bra with a pair of matching panties. With the blood red lips and black lined eyes, Natasha looked every inch the femme fatale that Clint knew she was.

“Voila,” Agent Raylan said, and closed her make-up kit with a snap. “My work here is done.”

“You mean you took an attractive woman and made her naked? I’m willing to bet that your file doesn’t list that particular skill set.” Clint waggled his eyebrows. “Why did you ever wear this when we dated, Nat?”

“Possibly because I always figured you liked me for my mind,” Natasha threw the robe at her chair before turning and heading toward the backdrops. “But mostly because I was always trying to kill you with my thighs, and you were too squirmy for me to get a good grip.”

“I always thought that we just had really, really weird sex,” Clint muttered and stole her seat. Nat waved a hand at him, turning to talk to the photographer.

Raylan snorted from where she was currently packing up her things. “It’s people like you that make SHIELD the happy place it is. Now, if you’ll excuse me, today’s my day off and there’s a Russian arms dealer that I want to get a bit more intimate with.”

Clint grinned. Across the room Natasha lounged on the floor, a white fur rug beneath her. “Sounds like a kinky evening.”

Raylan snorted. “It might be, if he knew about it. But since it’s just me getting snuggly with his finances, I’m afraid it’ll be a rather PG-13 sort of night. Don’t ruin my work, because I’m not coming back, and tell Romanoff that she’s not getting out of her end of this deal just because her face is going to be famous for a while. I can work around that.”

Clint saluted her as Raylan threw her bag over her shoulder and headed for the door. She paused and glanced back at him, her gaze considering. “Then again, I also have something which you might be able to help with.”

Interested, Clint leaned forward, elbows braced against his knees. Raylan gave some of the more interesting missions, the ones that didn’t involve shooting things at a distance. Reconnaissance work, usually, but sometimes more basic defense issues. “What did you have in mind?”

The sound of the door clanging shut caused her to jerk her head around, startled. Coulson headed toward them, shutting his phone as he walked. Raylan turned back to Clint. “Basic info gathering. Ever infiltrated a men’s club before?”

Clint grinned. “Maybe a time or two. How about you?”

Raylan’s mouth twitched up. “Successfully. I’ll send you some of the info tonight. If you’re in, then let me know and I’ll send the rest.”

Clint frowned. Usually, there’s a procedure. If other agents want his skills, need an impossible shot or sentient eyes in the sky, then they go through his handler. According to Coulson, there’s paperwork, there’s issues with passports and medical and profiles. He suspects part of it is Coulson’s need for control over all that is SHIELD. But other agents didn’t just send him the info. After all, what was the point in having a handler, if other agents did all the work? “That’s a bit under the table, isn’t it?”

Raylan’s small smile faded. “Of course not. Fury’s aware of what I’m working on, as are other level seven agents. In fact, I have a pool going against Sitwell; if I get to this guy first, then he has to buy my coffee for an entire month.” Raylan’s love of iced coffee was legendary amid SHIELD agents.

Clint’s gaze flickered to Coulson and instantly the haze of confusion fled Raylan’s face. “He’s going to be busy for a bit handling the Avenger’s thing. You’re probably going to be free-lancing until things settle. He’ll be Stark-sitting before the month’s out.” She smiled. “Poor bastard. Thank God he’s capable of it all. That many headstrong people; I’d shoot myself within the week.

“Wait, what?” As far as Clint had heard, Coulson was just putting things into motion. To actually be on site, to be pegged to watch Stark already, meant a lot more about this op than what was being let on. They expected it to fail. They expected Nat to be exposed. They expected Coulson to be a part of it.

The level of bullshit just kept rising.

But Raylan was already gone, passing Coulson as he headed in. She gave a lazy wave and he nodded in response. “That was the research department,” Coulson said as he stopped next to Clint’s inert form. “Natalie Rushman’s back story is complete; anyone who does any background research on her will discover that she is accomplished academically, extracurricularly, and is linguistically proficient.” His gaze raked across Clint’s tense shoulders, over his rigid spine and clenched hands.

“Sounds like the star of a horrible porno, sir,” Clint forced himself to relax. He leaned back in the chair, crossed his ankles, folded his hands behind his neck. “In fact, all of this seems…” Behind Coulson, the photographer was gesticulating rapidly, hands sketching out a smiley face. Natasha lifted an eyebrow, and even at fifty feet Clint could read the suggestion of pain in that simple movement. “like way too much work.”

Too much work. When the payoff wasn’t worth the sacrifice. Clint wondered how permanent this change would be, if Coulson would only handle the Initiative members or if he would stay with any of his assets. He wondered how long until he too became too much work. For the first time since learning about the Initiative, a small worm of doubt began to trace its way through him.

Coulson shrugged and slipped his phone into his pocket. Clint could feel him studying him, feel the weight of his gaze on his skin. “We need to get close to Stark. A man who has people to do his research for him, and robots to make sure that those people don’t make mistakes. This is the best way to manage it.” Clint shifted slightly in his chair, positive that any moment Coulson would ask what was wrong, and he’d have to admit that, barring a sudden jealousy that he was being left behind, that Clint didn’t know. And that was a conversation that he really didn’t want to have with an audience. The seconds ticked by, punctuated by the click of the camera and the shouted instructions of the photographer.

And then Coulson glanced away, and the weight lifted He cast a critical eye over Natasha’s posed figure. “Do you think the photographer can get her to actually smile?”

Clint wasn’t sure if he was happy about the unexpected reprieve or not. “I don’t think Nat smiles. Not unless someone’s dying. Or she’s killing someone.”

“Of course not,” Coulson sighed again. “Black Widow, please stop strangling the photographer. We still need him.”

~~~

Clint was certain that most photo shoots didn’t go anything like that, and hoped that most models didn’t actually try to annihilate their photographers. But then, what did he know about the industry? He’d only assassinated two agents, an ex model and a man who used to photograph trees. The guy hadn’t even been a professional.

Behind him, Coulson tossed his keys into the bowl on the table and opened the fridge. “So, that’s a couple of steps toward the Initiative taking off. Not held up at all by the fact that we just got back from staging the accidental death of a pushy photographer.”

“Still don’t know we’re going to fake car accident from a stab wound in the neck.” Clint pulled the chair out from the table, and cringed as the feet scraped against the tile floor. He sat down heavily, moving the chair a few inches further.

“We have people for that,” Coulson frowned into the depth of the fridge, then pulled out two beers and pushed the door shut. “Want to just order out?” he asked, cracking the tab off one can and putting it in front of Clint. Clint made an uninterested noise, and took a long swig. “It’s either that, or we’re eating sandwiches.” He waited, other beer still in hand, starting down at Clint.

Clint crinkled his nose. He knew it was weird, but he hated sandwiches. It felt like he was in third grade, instead of an actual adult.

He knew he should say something, suggest pizza from that little place on third where the grease practically dripped from the slice, but it’d been a long day and food in general really didn’t sound appetizing. Not when he knew that in a few months, if not sooner, that Natasha and Coulson would be moving on to something bigger and badder and better. And he’d be stuck with a different handler, Sitwell who he liked and Coulson trusted, or Raylan and her information networks if he was lucky, but more than likely he’d end up in wet-works. Because there aren’t so many uses for a guy who could shoot other than making things dead.

Coulson said nothing, didn’t even open up his own beer, and Clint stared down at the tabletop. He wondered how long they’d last, when Coulson was too busy handling people who were actually saving the world to come home.

Coulson sighed and sank down into one of the chairs across from him Clint kept his gaze on the table, knowing he couldn’t stave off the conversation, hating that it was coming. They sat in stony silence, broken only by the scrape of Clint’s bear can across the top of the table. “Do you want to tell me what’s wrong?” Coulson finally asked. “I can’t fix a problem unless I have all the information.”

And good God, they lived their jobs. It was the uncomfortable third wheel in their lives, the naggy friend and pushy relative all rolled into one dysfunctional basket. Clint wondered when Coulson would start wondering all these same things, and call this off. He must know how this ended; Coulson was nothing if not well prepared. He thought steps ahead, had back up plans for his contingency plans, and knew every possible outcome to every possible action. He didn’t waste time.

So then, what were they doing?

Coulson cleared his throat. “At the moment, we’re trying to decide what to do for dinner,” he said mildly. Clint’s eyes jerked up from the tabletop in horror as he realized he’d actually spoken the thought out loud. “Then I figured, after we ate, we could do something horribly domestic, like watch television or something. I thought we’d enjoy what was left of our time together, and then we’d go to bed where I might be convinced to engage in sexual activities.” Usually, the way Coulson phrased “let’s go fuck” would get a laugh out of Clint. He wasn’t feeling it today. “But it doesn’t look like that’s what you want to do.”

He should disagree. Say that of course he wants sex, and the rest of it doesn’t sound too bad either. But the words were hollow and stuck in his throat when he tried, and he knew that Coulson would know too. So what’s the point? After all, they live their jobs-- and you don’t lie to your handler unless you’re expecting to die up in the tree. “Are you going to be the Avenger’s handler?” Are you going to leave me?

Oh, God, could he be any more needy? He could spontaneously turn into a thirteen year old with separation anxiety and Clint wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

Coulson’s eyebrow went up. “There aren’t any Avengers yet, Clint.” His voice was unexpectedly gently, and Clint was happy that he didn’t stave off time and ask how Clint even knew about that. “They haven’t assembled yet. But I’ll probably be a part of any liaison with it.”

“And Natasha will be what? A recruiting agent, sent to play secretary with each new member?”

Coulson shook his head. “I don’t know. We aren’t entirely certain who will make up the task force yet. Honestly, we aren’t sure there will actually even be a task force at this point.”

“Yeah, like Fury’s going to scrap this.” The man was worse than a dog with a bone about some things. Some things being any mission that he personally spent a good amount of time. This task force would succeed, and Fury would do anything to make sure it did. The only way the Avenger’s Initiative was getting scrapped was if someone came down and scraped the Director off the planet with a spatula. And even then, he probably had enough contingency plans that Maria Hill could finish the job. “He’s not going to risk losing his best spy or wasting your time on an idea that won’t pan out.”

Coulson shook his head. “It’s more complicated than that. Personality profiles, for instance. There’s a reason we do them, Clint.” A flicker of a smile across his face. “other than to piss you off, of course.” Coulson crossed his arms over his chest and tipped his chin down. His eyes remained solidly on Clint’s face. “This Initiative won’t do anyone any good if the members can’t work together.”

Clint chugged the rest of his beer and set the empty can down on the tabletop with a hollow clink. “A whole bunch of guys who have issues with authority.” Stark in a nutshell. Same with that guy down in the SHIELD catacombs, the one Coulson refused to work with. Same with any other name that had crossed the Director’s mind when considering the Avengers. Hell, a good chunk of SHIELD in general fit into that category. “What if they can’t work with you? Can‘t follow directions, aren‘t good with orders?”

One of Coulson’s eyebrows arched up, as if to ask what Clint was thinking with that question. “I’ve worked with some headstrong agents before. If I’m actually going to be involved, then I’ll do what I can to convince them I’m trustworthy.”

Clint laughed hollowly and dropped his gaze to the table. “You’re going to shoot all of them, sir? Or maybe you’ll just wait for a mission to go south and then swoop in and save them. Refuse to give up and all that.” What should have been a compliment-- because Coulson was all of that, was loyal and steady and Clint trusted him beyond anyone else at SHIELD (save Nat at times, but it was Coulson’s job to have his back at all times, and Nat’s to have it only when they were near one another). He trusted Coulson beyond anyone else he’d ever trusted since his brother.

But instead of complimentary, he sounded bitter. Harsh, stormy, angry. Mocking. Hurtful. Because even though he was proud of Coulson’s achievements, he was also unmoored by this.

Because all three of them lived, breathed and would die for this job. Because Clint still called Coulson by his surname, even at home, even when watching television or in their bed, because the Coulson at work at Coulson at home was the same. Because he called his handler “sir,” out of habit, out of respect, and not a single other person at SHIELD could claim the same thing by Hawkeye.

Because Coulson would no longer be his handler. No matter that they would still see each other at home, or at least they would if they were able to. Perhaps Coulson would move to another town, or live in SHIELD headquarters again. Perhaps they’d break up.

When Coulson didn’t say anything, didn’t give his usual dry ‘I save that for my favorite agents,’ or ‘Only the ones who really piss me off,’ Clint looked up. Coulson was still looking at him, still had that mild, expectant expression, but there was something lost there, and for a moment he thought that this was it, that Coulson would reach out and hold his hand and say ‘sorry, kid, it was fun while it lasted.’ Not that it would be that casual, he’d give Coulson that. They’d done well, lasted too long for it to be so casual.

Instead, before Coulson could say anything, before Clint could beat him to it just to save himself the indignity of losing, Clint stood up. “The normal?” Pizza. Pizza would help. Maybe he was stalling. Maybe he was putting off what needed to be said now. He didn’t care. “I’m going for that weird Thai-Italian thing that they’ve got listed in the specials. You know, peanuts and peppers and all that.”

Coulson stood up as well. “The normal is fine.” He hesitated, then closed the distance between them for the first time since they’d come home, tipped Clint’s chin up and pressed his mouth to the corner of his lips. “I’ll call it in for you,” he said, staring hard into Clint’s eyes, and suddenly Clint got the feeling that there was something else being said, something important. He nodded, and Coulson looked wary. Coulson turned, plucking his phone from his pocket and dialing a number they both knew by heart, striding into the living room as he spoke to the teenager who always answered the phone.

Clint’s eyes dropped down to the tabletop. Coulson’s beer still sat near the edge, untouched, unopened. A drop of condensation inched its way down to the small puddle at its base. He sighed, groped about in his pocket for his keys, and headed toward the door.


	2. Still a Fuck-Up, Even When Bored

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Clint works with other agents, and communication is not resolved with Coulson.

He came back late that night, a cold box of pizza in hand and slipped through the dark apartment. He’d watched from the building next door until Coulson had given up and shut off the lights, plunging their apartment into darkness. He’d waited until he was sure that he wouldn’t have to answer any questions because even Clint knew he had the emotional development of a beta, and all puddle-jumpers knew the best way to avoid danger was to leap out head first and find somewhere safe. Too bad if most betas ended up on the carpeted floor of their owners apartments: Clint was a master at jumping and he always landed on his fins. Feet. Whatever.

He really needed a better metaphor.

Clint navigated through the apartment with ease. Coulson was nothing if not organized, an OCD personality wrapped up in type-A mindset, and the floor plan was the same now as it had been when they first moved in. He put the tepid pizza in the fridge, hoped that it hadn’t been so long as to give either of them food poisoning, then padded his way to their bedroom. He could just make out the bulge that was Coulson, taking up the left side of the bed. Clint stripped and slipped between cold sheets.

He knew that Coulson was awake, could tell by the speed of his breath and the stillness of his body. Clint waited, eyes trained on the wall in front of him, back stiff in apprehension.

“Your files came earlier,” Coulson said suddenly, and Clint started. That wasn’t the direction he’d imagined this conversation would go. “The ones from Raylan. I glanced through them.”

That was unsurprising. Until Coulson officially resigned, or until he was placed elsewhere, Coulson was still his handler, and would still be involved in whatever mission he was handed. Privacy was something meant for other people. Clint shrugged, and twisted around so they could face each other. With the curtains drawn, Clint couldn’t see anything. And if Hawkeye was blind, then chances were slim that someone else could see. “Notice anything important, sir?” If Coulson was willing to ignore tonight, then he would play as well.

One hand came up to touch his chest gently. “ Wheels up in a month, but there isn’t much for you to prepare for. Cover’s already created, and you’ve played a waiter before. Everything is by the book.” Which was a Coulsonese compliment if Clint had ever heard one. “Jones’ll be involved,” he added a moment later, as if it were an afterthought.

Clint swore, loud and long and Coulson chuckled softly. “Raylan didn’t say anything about that.”

“Of course not. Not if she wanted you.” His hand moved upward, fingers stroking along Clint’s neck up to scratch gently at his scalp. It was akin to being petted, and Clint relaxed into the gentle exploration. “I wouldn’t have told you if it were me.”

Clint gave a small grunt of displeasure. “You’re not allowed to deal with Jones.” Ever. He’d shoot the man before he allowed him to be Coulson’s new asset. Even if he somehow gained the ability to predict enemy attacks and could move things with his mind, he still wouldn’t be good enough.

Neither were you, a small voice nagged at him. Neither are you. Clint’s shoulder tensed back up and Coulson sighed. “I’m not planning on it. I already have an asset, and unless he steals the covers tonight then I plan on keeping him for a while.”

Clint muttered again, but the vise in his shoulder loosened a notch. It was a relief, to know that Coulson wasn’t actively planning on getting rid of him. Yet. Of course, actively planning and succumbing to the unavoidable were two totally separate things and even Coulson gave in and did the unavoidable when necessary. But Clint would take what he could get. He sighed and stretched out with his forehead barely brushing against Coulson’s chest and let sleep drag him down.

~~~

He could hear the alarm clock go off, just on the edge of his mind. He felt sluggish, disoriented, and he wondered why Coulson hadn’t yet turned it off. A moment later, Coulson rolled over on top of him, chest pressing him down into the pillow as ome arm reached for the alarm on the bedside table. Clint grunted, pinned between Coulson’s chest and the overly pummeled pillow he’d had since before joining SHIELD. Then Coulson’s hand found the switch and the room plunged into beautiful, sweet silence.

Clint sighed and nestled deeper into his pillow. For a long moment, Coulson didn’t move, simply lay half on top of him with his hand still on the bedside table. Slowly, Clint became aware of smaller details: the half-hard cock pressed against the back of his thigh, the shifting lips at the top of his spine. He was on the edge of really noticing, of reaching back and enticing Coulson to make a real move when Coulson planted a kiss to the plane of his shoulder and muttered “I’m assigned to Flushing Springs. Wheels up at eighteen-hundred.”

Clint sighed and cracked open his eyes. “Sounds horrible. You’ll have to watch all the rich people while hanging out in air-conditioned condos. Try not to like the view too much.” He could feel the curve of Coulson’s lips against his skin. “Try not to kill Stark,” he added, just to prolong the feeling of upturned lips against flesh.

Instead, Coulson sighed. “He’s worse than you,” he commented and rolled off him.

“Ouch, sir.”” Clint sat up, balled his hands in the comforter that pooled around his hips. Coulson smiled again, leaned down and pressed a kiss to his lips before saying something about a meeting and wandering toward the bathroom.

Clint watched him go, enjoying the shift of muscles and bounce of flesh before the door shut behind him and he was alone. He fell back against the pillows, stretched, and considered the ceiling. The thing in Flushing Springs would probably take a long time. Which left Clint alone in their apartment for a month.

One month until Raylan’s job meant that there was a lot of time to watch Coulson and Natasha begin their new lives. Whatever that entailed. Today, Natasha would begin her new cover as a notary; the reports would go out that Potts was the new CEO of StarkIndustries, Coulson would manage things from behind the scenes long enough for something to go wrong (Stark was involved, something was bound to go wrong, even Clint could predict that) and then take care of it like always.

Well, fuck that. He worked in the largest underground spy network ring in the world. They monitored potential threats for a living, which meant that there was always something to do. There would be someone who needed an asset for the next few weeks; he just needed to let other agents know he was a available.

~~~

There were plenty of agents Clint enjoyed working with when Coulson was out of the picture. Sitwell was a personal favorite. Raylan’s ops were always fun. And then there were the twins, Clem and Brody Jankrins, the only level seven agents who actually acknowledged their first names. They should have been fun; Brody looked like a hippie that had undergone a makeover from a surfer and Clem simply appeared to have spent way too much time in the sun. Instead, they were cold, calculating in a manner that set even Clint’s teeth on edge, and perpetually angry.

They were also the wet-works department.

Clint had never considered that statement to be hyperbole. They ran the wet-works division; both knew exactly who was going to be assassinated, probably were on first-name basis with every paid killer on the planet, and absolutely loved their jobs. Rumor around the water cooler said that they played with peoples lives the way others played poker. Your guy gets that third world dictator in the next two days, and I’ll assassinate that guy in Amsterdam that said the color purple was ugly. Unfortunately, it was also the easiest find for the next few weeks. After all, no matter when or why, someone somewhere needed to die.

Clint was really, really good at making things die.

Two days later had him holed up in Annapolis with darts filled with medicine that would simulate a heart attack waiting for the head of some pharmaceutical company to decide that yes, he did need that third hotdog. A week after that he was in Bolivia, camped out in a tree with his sights on a local politician who held a connection to terrorists that needed to be severed, any means possible. And four days after that he was on a boat just off the Australian coastline, watching a billionaire and his current mistress curl up around one another on a secluded island. Poor bastard, but at least he had one more good memory before he went.

Each time he finished up he’d be met by the Jankrins. Their perpetually angry expressions would soften just enough to let him know he did well and then they’d send him off to the next target. They never asked about the mission except to know that there were no problems, they never checked in while he was in the field, and never asked why he was suddenly interested in working for them when for years Clint had Coulson keep him off their radar. They certainly didn’t ask about the hollow pit that he could feel forming in his gut, the one which simply grew as each mission went on, and no one ever breathed about psyche evals. They didn’t remind him to take care of himself, to eat better, to sleep at night, and in the end they were so far removed from Coulson that it felt like culture shock. The fact that both the twins and Coulson were level seven agents boggled his mind. But it kept him occupied. Clint did his job, came back to New York, debriefed, and crashed in their apartment alone, to exhausted to feel the lonliness.

Thankfully, after one last stop in Japan to see to a drug kingpin, it was time for wheels up.

~~~

Unfortunately, this wasn’t one of the times that Coulson was proved wrong. Jones was involved. The bastard

The star of the wet-works division and an infiltrator that challenged Natasha. He was short, barely clearing five-six, a thin weasel of a man who was quietly efficient and supremely confident. Clint had hated him the first time they’d met. That he’d been one of Coulson’s former assets, one of his favorites, had absolutely nothing to do with it. The fact that the man was a smug asshole, on the other hand, was the header on the list.

“So here’s the thing.” Raylan had insisted that their team meet, tucked away in some off-beat cafe in Arizona. “We’re going in after Neal Abernathy. He’s a small times arms dealer, not really worth much in today’s economy, but most importantly he’s an easy way into the big guys. The actual object of this exercise is Solohob, one of Abernathy’s suppliers.”

Clint nodded, wanting to point out that not only had he read the file but he and Coulson had gone over it that day a month ago before Coulson disappeared on duty. Across the cafe, Jones sipped on an espresso and pretended they didn’t exist. It was pretty convincing; even Clint found himself believing it. The man was good, he’d give him that. But that wasn’t the biggest reason he hated working with him. ““So we infiltrate the men’s club he’s a part of, get him to like us, then bam, we’re in?” Seemed a bit far-fetched.

Raylan shrugged. “I’m just getting you two into the club. Your job is to get whatever information there is and bring it to me. His job is to get information and bring it to me. So long as I get what I want, then I’m a happy agent.”

“So I’m the back-up?” he asked. It was basically what Coulson had told him before they left, and even though he’d thoughtfully left out phrases like ‘not as good’ and ‘substandard,’ Clint had a pretty good idea that Coulson believed he couldn’t compete with Jones.

“If by backup you mean 'a totally separate entity which is going to get information for me,' then fine.” Raylan sipped on her coffee. “How you do it, or who even does it, is irrelevant.” Which was agent code for ‘I know about your stupid rivalry, and I’m using it to my advantage.’ She grinned abruptly, knowing full well he’d gotten the gist of the message. “Hell, I’ll even reward the one of you who brings the information back by spreading a new rumor about your abilities around SHIELD.”

“That sounds a whole lot like falsifying information, Agent Raylan.”

Raylan shrugged. “Fact: ‘truth’ is a flexible word. I make information true just as often as I find out true information.” She leaned back in her seat, tapped one foot against the leg of the table. "You'd be surprised at how necessary that skill-set actually is."

“You must have a very interesting file,” Clint commented. He’d always wondered about the files on each agent, about what skill-sets were listed, what information the uppers found important. He had a theory that his wouldn’t be very flattering, save his hand-eye coordination: impertinence, lippy, likes to sleep with commanding officers…

“My file is a Hello Kitty folder with a smiley face on the inside,” Raylan twined her fingers together and rested her chin on top of them. “And when Fury figures it out, I’ll switch to some annoying Japanese pop artist complete with a picture of Gene Simmons' tongue. Point is, I need a link to Solohob.” She stood, coffee in hand. “Find me my link, Barton.”

He nodded, stealing a glance across the cafe again. He needn't have bothered; Jones was long gone, his coffee cup the only indication he’d ever even been in the shop. Clint swore again, glared up at Raylan as she grinned, and stalked out of the building. If Jones thought he would be the one bringing Solohob in, then he had another think coming.

~~~

Of course, it didn’t help that they were going in practically blind. They knew that Abernathy was here to relax. They knew he had men to help him out. They knew how long he’d be there, and who he’d be meeting with, and even the names of his three cats whom he never left home without (Blinky, Pillow and Suitcase, a trio of names which only made Clint hate him a bit more). And yet this supplier was lost in the static, a ghost.

He hadn’t been happy about her choice for his cover, either. “A waiter? Really? Jones is going in as some rich asshole and I get to be the hired help,” he’d ranted at Coulson as they’d made breakfast. Coulson had been stirring eggs while Clint cut some fruit with a veracity usually reserved for killing people.

“She probably thinks she’s using her resources as best as possible,” Coulson hadn’t even glanced up from his saucepan. “Putting you two in separate ends of the facility is smart planning, Clint.”

“She made the guy who shoots things a waiter. I can do the rich guy; I’ve done the rich guy before.” Clint tossed the knife at the counter beside the sink. It stuck into the wood counter top, handle quivering.

“Stop that,” Coulson had reached out and plucked it loose, setting the blade in the sink. “We live here; it’s not a space for target practice. The covers are sound, they practically exist as real people. If there’s an advantage to your job, then it’s there. Raylan wouldn’t have created a cover that didn’t have any use.”

“You wouldn’t have done that,” Clint had corrected. He hopped up on the counter where the knife had been, feet dangling off the floor. “You would have made sure everything was perfect. She’s not you.” As if either of them really needed reminding. This was his first real op apart from Coulson in years.

“I know,” Coulson had poked his eggs one more time, then removed them from the heat. He pushed them off onto the two plates, ran water over the saucepan to remove leftover debris, then pushed between Clint’s parted legs. “And you wouldn’t be going if she wasn’t efficient,” he said, speaking against Clint’s lips. “Which you already know.”

Clint sighed. He’d linked his ankles behind Coulson’s back, had kissed and licked into him as if he might not get another chance to taste him. Which, in all honesty, was always a truth he’d rather not think about. Now, he held his tray of champagne glasses aloft, smiled at the guests as they plucked drink after drink off of him, noted which ones glanced at him, and which didn’t. None of them even glanced at his face.

Until Abernathy. Who sized him up and down. It had taken most of the night to get close to him. Luckily, Jones had been having the same problem; apparently, Abernathy’s posse was a bit clingy and overprotective. And while it was fun to watch Jones stew, Clint just wanted to get this mission on its way.

Abernathy paused in front of him, taking the champagne glass off Clint’s tray. “It must get old, putting up with all this,” he said conversationally, and it took him several minutes to realize that the man was speaking to him.

He rearranged his mind as quickly as possible, bringing an expression of bland inquisitiveness to his features. “Sir?” he asked.

Abernathy sipped at his wine, eying Clint. “Putting up with a group of men like this, having to smile and nod and basically care for us. A man like you,” his eyes roamed up and down Clint’s body, “could do so much better.”

The unspoken offer wasn’t too hard to understand. A blind man could have seen the want practically pouring off the guy. Clint swallowed, glanced around as if nervous they’d be seen, then moved the drink tray from between them. It served a dual purpose; the man would get a better view of what he was looking at, and Clint would appear much more open, approachable, as if he wanted the man’s attention. “I’m always okay with moving up,” he said quietly, letting his gaze go to the man’s lips and then move downward slowly. “Or moving over, or under, or any which way you’d want to.”

Abernathy smiled and raised his glass. “Perhaps we’ll find a way for you to succeed.” He tipped the contents back and waded back into the tide of the party. Clint just grinned, before schooling his expression to something a bit more modest and turned to find another guest to cater to. He had his in.

~~~

Unfortunately, it appeared that Abernathy hadn’t been quite as interested as he’d originally seemed. He’d remained aloof the rest of the party, and no matter how often Clint managed to pass by him, he never gave more than a cursory glance in Clint’s direction.

“He’s playing some kind of game with you,” Raylan said quietly. Clint could hear the sounds of fingers clacking away on keyboards in the background. “He’s always been interested in the help before, always liked finding that one guy who wanted more and taunting him with—” Raylan’s voice cut off sharply. “Actually, it looks like we can use this.”

“What?” Clint demanded. He’d been put off for the entire evening. It was a bit insulting. The only good thing was that Abernathy’s cronies were still keeping Jones at bay. He’d smirked at the man the last time he’d been rebuffed. Unfortunately, Jones had responded by calling him over only to complain about the temperature of the wine.

“He likes competition. Or rather—” she laughed. “Make sure you walk out onto the compound at the same time he does tonight. I have an idea that might ingratiate you to him.”

Clint had sighed, but said nothing. It wasn’t any worse sounding than any other plan he’d thought of. In fact, it was actually a lot better than a few of his ideas.

He managed to do as she asked, heading for the door as she did, claiming he needed a smoke when asked by another server. He made sure that Abernathy saw him, and headed for the far edge of the compound, out in the open. Abernathy’s gaze followed him, interested but not quite enough to do more. Not yet. Clint grimaced. Raylan had better be thinking of something good, anything that would hook this—

And then he saw her, walking up the path to meet him. Dressed in a skirt that showed off her legs, a clingy top that revealed all of the cleavage her figure shouldn’t be able to produce. There was a wig, and make-up, and Raylan looked like the most feminine woman he’d ever seen. She stopped in front of him, wrapped her arms around him, and reached up on her toes. “Pretend you like me more than you obviously do,” she whispered in his ear. “Trust me.”

He didn’t. But he slipped his arms around her and held her close and all the while he could feel Abernathy’s gaze on him, burning and interested. “I can’t believe you took so long,” Raylan whined, and he almost laughed at how high pitched and nasally her voice came out. “You promised you’ be out here an hour ago.”

Clint’s eyebrows went up but he played along. “Baby, I tried to make it,” he said, and tried to wrap his fingers around her back again. “I just got busy.”

She stepped back. “Busy. You said that last night, too. And then you didn’t show up for hours.”

He caressed her hand. He wasn’t sure if he should blow it, or make it better, or what the hell this game was about because he didn’t have the right information. This was ridiculous; how did she expect him to know the play if she didn’t tip her hand? “I had to work.”

She melted. “I know, you do so well. I just miss you.” She stepped back into his personal space, and they spent a few more minutes nuzzling before she glanced around and, with a last kiss, ran off. Clint flexed his hands, and wanted to ask what the hell she thought that would accomplish. Too bad he still had an audience.

Which was interesting. What sort of man liked to watch his current conquest make out with another person? Clint turned and met his eyes, and even from the distance he could see the want and interest, ramped up from what it had been earlier this evening. Oh. That kind of person.

Abernathy stepped him to him and ran his hand down the front of his shirt. “Cute girl. Maybe you can treat her better, if you do well.”

Clint grinned. “I’d love a chance to show off for you, sir.” Abernathy smiled, dark and predatory, and pushed him gently into a small shed beside the main house. The door had barely closed behind him when Abernathy shoved him into the wall, lips sealing over his own like he was drowning. Clint gasped, grabbing on instinctively. “You liked that?” he whispered. Abernathy laughed quietly and pushed closer, a leg shoving Clint’s apart, and suddenly it clicked. What Raylan had seen in the files, the purpose of dressing up and playing girlfriend. “You like that she just walked off and left us alone?”

He pressed his lips to Abernathy’s rolled their hips together as the arms dealer moaned against him “you like that I’m cheating on my girlfriend?” he whispered, the words still tasting awkward in his throat. “You like that she just walked away, thought everything was fine? That you’re the one I’m with right now?”

Abernathy made a noise in the back of his throat, strangling almost, and Clint nearly rolled his eyes in disgust. The man was rutting against him, a pig in heat, all hands and thighs and nothing appealing about him in the least. There was nothing controlled, nothing efficient. Nat and Coulson had apparently ruined him for regular relationships. Which meant he was in a great deal of trouble

He couldn’t respond to this guy, couldn’t get himself hard. There wasn’t even the sharp appeal of adrenaline coursing through him, or the flush of the taboo urging him forward. Clint squeezed his eyes closed, and ran through the sexiest things he could think up, Coulson in field gear, Nat in lingerie, naked movie stars and Dolce and Gabana. “You like it,” he gasped, and pressed his mouth to Abernathy’s throat. “You like that I’m choosing you over him.”

He didn’t realize what had slipped out until Abernathy went rigid. “Him?” he repeated, pushing back from Clint with a suspicious stare. The red lust -driven flush drained from his features slowly.

Clint’s mind raced He had a few options-- the most obvious being to simply say ‘what , you didn’t notice,’ like his girlfriend was actually male and simply really good at passing. Or he could hit him really hard in the head and knock him out. Of course, that one was harder to recover from, especially if there were any of Abernathy’s people roaming the compound.

There was no help from the comm in his left ear, and he was seriously contemplating a good punch to the face as Abernathy pulled back, brows dipped down in what almost looked like an offended scowl. “What is going on here?” He stood up, reaching for his cell phone while Clint stammered and tried to back pedal until a voice finally came on over the comm

“Front jacket pocket. Use the syringe now.”

Clint had the needle buried in Abernathy’s neck and plunger completely depressed when he realized that the voice on the comm wasn’t Raylan’s as it had been since the mission had started, but instead was deeper, fuller, calmer. Masculine. In charge. Calm, with that potential of violence always just lurking under the surface.

Coulson.

Clint caught Abernathy as he tipped forward, eyes glazed over, still muttering under his breath even as he slid into unconsciousness. The door to the shed opened and Jones walked in, making a beeline for Abernathy’s inert form, still dressed in his impeccable worship-me-I’m-rich suit.

“Amateur,” he muttered, shoving Clint’s arm out of the way to get a grip on Abernathy and that stung. Clint tensed, but said nothing as they dragged the small-times arms dealer to the window. Two agents caught him as they tipped Abernathy out.

“Don’t follow,” Raylan’s voice cut sharply into across his ears. He couldn’t tell if she was angry or not. “Don’t break cover. Barton: finish your shift. Jones: excuse yourself after a respectable amount of time and meet us back on base.”

Jones swore again and shot Clint a venomous glare. “We’re not breaking it off then?” he asked, sounding genuinely surprised.

Raylan laughed. There was absolutely no amusement hidden in the corners of the sound, no happiness in the creases. “Jones, I know you’re used to working in substandard situations, but there is no situation I’ve come across that a little creativity cannot fix.” Not even one that Barton screwed up.

Clint winced. He may have imagined the response, or perhaps it was floating out there for all to see. "Get back here and we’ll salvage it."

“But--”

“That will be all, agent.” And she shut her microphone off. The click was almost like a shot, a snap that echoed into stillness.

Jones cursed again and a moment later Clint’s personal space was filled with a highly irate spy. “If you’ve blown this, Barton,” he said quietly, his mouth a bare inch away from Clint’s ear, “then I’ll end you.”

For once, no clever rejoinder found it’s way to Clint’s lips, no one-line smart answer, no clever quip.

And usually it’d be so easy.

Clint said nothing, merely gazed hotly back at Jones until the other man sneered and stepped back. He pulled himself together, dusted off his impeccable suit, reset his expression, and slipped back int the crowded hallway, easy as ever.

Clint rested his hand against the wall and tried to get his face to cooperate, to reflect anything other than pure rage. It wasn’t working

Suddenly, he’d had enough. Clint whipped his arm back and struck out as hard as he could. There was a loud slam, a sharp crack and fire laced up his wrist. Clint caught his breath, bit back a mangled, inarticulate moan of rage, and leaned his head against the wall, almost relishing the pain that arced up his forearm, a cleansing, equalizing pain.

Eventually, it subsided enough and he grabbed his apron, thanked every deity he’d ever heard of that his shift was short, and headed back out into the fray.

~~~

The rest of the night went smoothly. Guests occasionally glance at his hand, back at the frozen cheer on his face, and not a single one said a word. Finally, he was free of it all, and he retreated back to the little warehouse they’d set up shop in, a hiding place that was practically a concrete maze, complete with hidden cubbys and walkways. Clint had approved of it on sight. Now, with it’s spread out floor plan and twisting corridors, he was rethinking that initial opinion. After all, it meant that he would have to walk past the command center to get to his room. And that was just way too public.

It endedup being a moot point. He was only two feet in the door when Coulson pushed him into an alcove. Clint waited for a lecture, for questions he really didn’t want to answer. Instead, Coulson pushed two pills into Clint’s uninjured hand.

Clint stared down at the twin little ovals. “I don’t need them,” he said.

Coulson clasped his hands loosely in front of himself, and tipped his head just slightly to the left. ““I don’t recall asking if you needed them, Barton.”

Clint considered the calm stance and the almost bland expression. He took in the barely-there tension riding across Coulson’s shoulders, the gentle clasp of his fingers and the firm set of his jaw. Coulson, to the outside world, was as calm as he ever was. But to someone who had worked with him in some pretty intense situations, who had seen what he looked like doing paperwork and what he looked like while watching someone bleed out, he looked furious. Pissed.

He swallowed the pills dry.

“Didn’t know they were bringing you in on this one, sir,” he managed around the lump that was literally only millimeters away from his vocal chords. He tried to focus on Coulson’s response of “they're not,” rather than choking on a small chalky drug.

“I’m just driving through on my way to New Mexico,” he said mildly. “Agent Raylan has been filling me in, and I thought I’d sit in for a bit. Wait for the rental car to show up, make sure everything was in order.” Check in on you, make sure you haven’t fucked up.

“Of course.” Even if Coulson had done it because he didn’t trust Clint to do it on his own, that was still okay. That was Coulson’s job.

Coulson nodded once. “You may as well head back to your room. There’s a meeting in two hours; nothing to do until then.”

Clint nodded in response, and watched as Coulson slipped out of the alcove. He started to follow, then couldn’t really think of a good reason to do so. To get to his room he’d still have to go through the entirety of the compound. He’d have to walk past other assets and agents who knew how he’d fucked up. He’d have to go near Jones. And that was an indignity he currently couldn’t deal with. Instead, he sank down to lean against the wall, feet stretched out and brushing against the opposite wall of the little alcove and sighed.

The pills started to kick in, slowly, easing off the acrid pain and making it all a bit more bearable. He leaned his head against the wall, counted the cracks that ran along the ceiling, and savored loneliness that edged inside of him. He may have even dozed off for a while. Finally, he told himself to stop procrastinating, dragged himself upright, shook the cobwebs from his brain, and began the long trek toward his bleak quarters.

He'd nearly traversed about two-thirds of the compound, pointedly staring ahead whenever he passed anyone and generally ignoring every other soul he encountered when he overheard the quiet argument, tension laping around the concrete walls like waves.

“You should have known he’d respond that way,” Coulson was saying, voice low and angry. Clint started, and came to a stop in the corridor. This was more than his earlier irritation, more than the gentle fingers and firm jawline. This was fury. White hot and bubbling. This was the Coulson version of a screaming fit.

It took a lot to get Coulson angry. It took even more to make him show it. Clint held his breath, refused to move, ears straining for any response.

A dismissive noise. Raylan, then. “I’m not an idiot, Coulson. There was only one way for that situation to go.”

“And you risked an agent to make it happen.”

“There were men there to help him. Abernathy will lead us to the guy we need.”

“It was risky and it was something you couldn’t account for.” She made a protesting sound, only to be overridden by Coulson. “It’s not a circumstance that I’m leaving him in. He’s my agent, and I’m pulling him out.”

“You dare—” she cut herself off. “We’re in the middle of this, and you think you can swing in and play the overprotective parent, save his kid from a bad day at school? This is what we do, Coulson. It’s what I do. Which he knew, and got himself into all on his own.” Clint could hear her stepping up to Coulson. “Perhaps that’s the issue you should really be worrying about. Because I’ve never had an asset who was under my solitary command go looking for work from outside sources.”

Clint winced. Sure, Raylan had approached him first, but he'd gone head first into the wet-works division with an enthusiasm he'd never shown before. He hadn’t realized he’d been so obvious. But then, when you worked with spies, perhaps there was no such thing as subtlety. There was nothing for a moment. Finally, Coulson took a step back, shoes ringing sharply against the concrete floor. “I’ll be needing him in New Mexico. I hope you can understand, and can use Jones to get what you need from here on out.”

Neither said anything for a long moment. Finally, Raylan sighed. “He helped out enough. He did his job well. You should tell him that for me.” She laughed, low and unamused. “You’ve trained him well.”

Coulson said nothing to that. Raylan snorted again and headed off down the corridor. Clint leaned against the wall, waited for Coulson to move on. He did, walking past the hideaway where Clint sat. “Wheels up in three hours,” he said without ever slowing down, and Clint burst out laughing. Something dark and angry uncurled inside of him, and he only held onto the words by biting them back, teeth sharp and ready to be used.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've changed the title. It didn't work, and this one just might. I'm not sure if I've broken any rules in doing so, but there it is. 
> 
> This little piece seems to be growing. I hope it's going well, anyway. 
> 
> Like always, thanks for reading.


	3. With Every Storm Comes a Lull

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Clint and Coulson get to New Mexico, more SHIELD personnel are found, and nothing is resolved.

Clint opened his eyes to the sight of scenery flying by. He sighed and tried to settle more deeply into the scratchy, leather-covered seat. Styrofoam proved unyielding, and all he managed to do was shift himself more to the right, face mashed up against the cool glass of the window.

“You should have moved to the back,” Coulson said. Clint screwed his eyes more tightly shut and turned away, as though by morphing with the seat underneath him he could somehow ignore everything around him. “You’d be able to stretch out then, at least.”

“I’m not riding in the back like a child,” Clint said, lips catching against the leather and slurring his words together. Perhaps by pretending that things were the same as always, he could somehow avoid the conversation looming in front of them. “Or some rich asshole.”

Coulson hummed softly. There was some classic rock on the radio, and he beat his fingers every so often to the rhythm, the soft taps barely able to be heard over the sound of the music.

Clint sighed into the upholstery. He’d known, from that moment when Coulson had cornered him with those two pills that they’d talk about this. The same way he’d known every time he’d messed up a mission that they’d debrief and it’d be miserable. Every time. Even in Budapest when Coulson had pulled him and Nat out, bleeding and raw while bullets still flew around them.

Nat. He’d spoken to her briefly on the phone, as the car had pulled away from Raylan’s hide-out, just after she’d called to inform Coulson about Stark and Vanko. She’d sounded tired in a way that was unusual, and Clint wondered if it was from having the rug pulled out a little too thoroughly this time. Perhaps the knowledge that she was unmasked, out in the open was getting to her.

The insane thing was that, apparently, SHIELD didn’t stop just because you were known world-wide. Being a part of Tony Stark’s life had the unfortunate side effect of making sure that everyone saw you, but even a wrung out card was useful in the right hand. And SHIELD really could use used-up spies.

Not that he’d ever tell her she was used up. Clint liked his liver exactly where it was, thank you. But he had to question both the operation that allowed a spy who had been burned to go undercover as well as the spy for going into a situation where the shadows couldn’t hide her. Her time with Solohob would not be fun. For anyone involved

Clint took a deep breath and gusted it out. Along with having one of the largest gas tanks that he’d ever seen, this particular rental also had the world’s most uncomfortable seats. It could feature in Ripley’s. Although Clint figured that not even that company would want something so mundane. “How much longer until we arrive?” How much longer till I can stop pretending to sleep to avoid this conversation?

Coulson reached for the radio, turning the volume down so that it was barely audible over the whoosh of the air conditioner. They’d set it to go as cold as possible, and Clint wasn’t looking forward to getting out into the dry heat of the desert. “GPS has us there in twenty. Sit up.” Sleepy time is over. We can talk now.

“Still tired, sir.” Clint hunched his shoulders, tried to make himself look as sleepy as possible. Don’t wanna. It got him a sharp poke in the kidneys.

“I don’t recall asking, agent.” There were lines of tension in that voice, warning bells that rang loudly throughout their little rental. Clint debated ignoring him. He could fake sleep for another twenty minutes, and really, this unspoken conversation they were having could possibly evolve into something that allowed Clint to avoid actually discussing anything. Then again, he thought, shifting his legs in the cramped legwell of the car, he could also probably jump out of a moving vehicle with the same amount of discomfort.

And then Coulson would simply turn the car around and run him down. Or just follow until Clint had worn himself out and climbed back in of his own volition. Bastard’d done it before, although the surrounding warzone and harsh climate had certainly been points in his favor.

Clint flounced against the seat, tried to lean it back further and only succeeded in choking himself with the belt. Finally, he rolled over and stared up at the ceiling of the car. He could just make out the edge of Coulson’s head in his peripheral. Raylan’s parting words were still echoing in his head, raw and angry. “Still angry at me,” he asked, reaching down between the seat and the door for his sunglasses.

Coulson hummed again. “Any reason I shouldn’t be? We’re going to have to get your hand x-rayed when we get on site, which is a wonderful use of resources for an intelligence gathering mission in the middle of the desert.”

Clint rolled his eyes. “You’re mad about my hand?” Which would be perfect, honestly. He could deal with that— nothing new there. He could blame that little mishap on frayed nerves from working with Jones, cajole his way into Coulson’s good graces via a roadside blowjob, and hopefully be back in the black by the time night fell.

“Of course I’m angry about your hand.” Coulson slowed the car and turned off onto a dirt road that was uneven enough to jostle Clint around in his seat. “It’s part of a whole, after all.”

Clint sighed. “Sir, I’m on some sort of really strong pain-killers after an op where I not only had to seduce some asshole but also had to keep myself from murdering Jones. You’ll excuse me if I just ask you to tell me what you mean instead of making me guess.”

Coulson shook his head, and turned down the radio. “In the past five years of working together, and the past four of living together, I have yet to see you splinter your own knuckles because an op went south.”

Clint bristled. “This op did not go south. No one died and Raylan seems positive that she’ll still get the information—” he cut himself off and groaned. There went that excuse. Which meant that Clint would have to come up with some other reason that wrecking his hand seemed like the best move, rather than doing all sorts of things that Coulson would consider more sensible. Like talking.

Well, fuck that. There was no way he was breaching that conversation. He could look plenty pitiful on his own, actually voicing it out loud —asking how long Coulson be around before he dumped him, trying to figure out how they’d work when they obviously couldn’t work together, deciding how the hell he could get an organization that knew how much he needed Coulson as a handler when he had just proven that they couldn’t trust him to accomplish anything.

He was basically screwed.

“Pretty much,” Coulson responded as if he’d read Clint’s mind. He probably could, the over-accomplished bastard (though, more likely, he’d just responded to the self-deprecation that seemed to color everything Clint did these days). The car hit a particularly deep hole and Clint rocketed back into his seat, head thumping almost painfully against the head-rest. “You’re keeping quiet about something.I don’t know what it is, and I don’t like it. I can’t fix it if I don’t know what it is.”

“You can’t fix everything,” Clint bolted upright and twisted around in his seat. The belt pulled against his shoulder almost painfully, and he pulled at it irritably. “Even you’re not that good.”

They drove in silence for a few minutes, Clint glaring out the window while Coulson’s fingers drummed with the music, slow and thoughtful. It went on long enough that Clint assumed there would be no answer, that the conversation would be left in limbo. “I’m glad you think that,” Coulson said finally.

Clint didn’t have to glance at him to know that he’s staring straight ahead, eyes carefully on the road, as if a small animal might run across in front of them, or an alien ship might decide that this lone desert road made the perfect touchdown spot. Sometimes, he hated his eyes, useful in almost any situation, hurtful in the few instances that he didn’t want to look. “Sir?” he asked finally. There was nothing else to look at, the brush nearly beaten down by a harsh, unforgiving sun, and no other cars to speak of.

“That I can’t fix everything,” Coulson clarified, and Clint couldn’t hide the wince that crawled across his face. He lowered his gaze to his lap, and the car slowed down abruptly, coming to the side of the road with a sharp twist of the wheel. Coulson twisted around in his seat, one arm braced against the steering wheel while the other hand settled on the back of Clint’s seat. “Why is that bad?” he asked, face neutral.

It was such a normal expression on him that usually Clint viewed it with affection. This time, it simply hid everything he wanted to know. “You’re asking why it’s bad that my handler thinks he can’t fix everything?” he stalled, lifting his eyebrows.

Coulson’s gaze didn’t waver. “I’m not, actually. I’m asking you why it’s bad that I can’t fix everything.”

Clint let his gaze wander out the front windshield. Off in the distance he could see a crater, with cars and trucks surrounding it. Smoke rose from the edges— not the kind found in disaster areas, but camp fires and barbecues. Oh dear God, he thought, they’ve turned an alien invasion into a national holiday.

Seemed appropriate, anyway. He slid his gaze back to Coulson, who was waiting with the expression that suggested he could do this all day. “I’m not really sure there’s a difference, sir,” Clint said finally, emphasizing sir as strongly as possible. “I’m dating my handler. We haven’t had a vacation since we got together. This is who we are.”

Coulson’s eyes flickered with some emotion that Clint wasn’t sure he understood, and then he nodded. “Fair enough.” He leaned back in his seat, against his own window and studied Clint’s face. “So why is it suddenly not working out the way it was?” He asked, saying the words carefully, measuredly.

Clint shrugged. Coulson’s gaze narrowed. “Because of the Initiative?” he asked slowly. It was, after all, the only thing that had changed. “Do you think—”

“I think there’s a crater with a bunch of hillbillies worshiping a satellite up ahead,” Clint cut him off. “I think you pulled me from a job to do another job. And I think that this is a conversation I don’t want to have when I’ve been compromised by pain killers and adrenaline.” He gestured sharply to the site. “Can we put this on hold?”

Coulson shut his eyes, and Clint settled back into his seat. He didn’t want to look, didn’t want to see if anger or hurt were fighting with that stoic expression. It wouldn’t help, wouldn’t change anything, to know if they were. “Alright,” Coulson said quietly. “We’ll get everything set up. We’ll take care of that.” He turned forward in his own seat and put the car in drive. “And then we’ll discuss this.” It sounded almost more like a threat than a promise.

Which, to be fair, was probably what it would take for the conversation to happen at all. “I look forward to it,” Clint said.

~~~

Clint surveyed the scene before him, watching scientists run amok and try and set up tents over the stories-deep crater. There were bulldozers trying to level the area, computers and generators and more plastic than a walk through Malibu. They’d removed the locals, had brought in the rest of their people, had examined the most hammer-like alien tech that Clint had ever seen (though, to be fair, he had never seen any alien anything before. Perhaps they just really liked hammers). Sitwell had joined them only an hour earlier, looking as harassed and unamused as ever. Now he was attempting to corral the scientists, to get them to change their own modes of operation and toe his line so that the information would make sense (Clint had heard the spiel before). So far, it wasn’t going very well (Though to be fair, it never did. Scientists did things their own way, no matter where they were).

Coulson had disappeared into the fray, phone attached to his face, ordering around anyone who came too close. Clint had wandered about as well, knowing full well that getting in Coulson’s way right now was about as useful as grabbing the grenade after throwing the pin. About as painful, too.

His eyes caught on a short man in an over-sized lab coat arguing with Sitwell about exposure and radiation and grinned. “They finally let you out in the world, eh kid?”

The young man whirled around as Sitwell rolled his eyes. “Agent Barton,” he exclaimed, happily, and threw his arms around Clint’s waist. “Agent Coulson said you were on another mission.”

Clint laughed and returned the hug. The kid had one of those personalities. He hugged almost everyone, which in Shield usually gained a person a black eye or a permanent job watching the penguins on Antarctica. Somehow this child of a man managed to get by remarkably unscathed, although he did have a very healthy wariness for Fury and a complete and utter fear of Nat. “Apparently Raylan didn’t need me anymore, Dr. Melville.”

Melville sniffed and leaned his head against Clint’s sternum. He’d always been strangely overly fond of Clint. “I’m glad. I’m not sure if we’ll need you here, though. It’s just a recovery mission. And it’s not even anywhere dangerous.”

Sitwell sighed. “No, I’m sure the desert is perfectly safe for everyone. In fact, we should all just leave our weapons at home.”

Clint grinned over the top of Melville’s head. “Is this a level seven thing, this sighing thing? Do you all have depression issues, or breathing problems?”

“Then it’s a good thing New Mexico is good for people with respiratory concerns,” Coulson said, tucking his phone into his pocket and coming to a stop beside Sitwell. “You two do realize that this is why no one takes either of you seriously?” 

Clint beamed at him. They’d been at odds with each other enough times while on ops that it was habit to push the irritation and angst back and let general attitude and snark fall into place. “Being unappreciated is my mutant ability, sir.”

Melville pushed his glasses up further on his nose and smiled almost shyly up at Couslon as he released his stranglehold on Clint’s torso to duck slightly behind him. If he had a strange fondness for Clint, he had an absolute crush on Coulson. Which Clint could appreciate, to be honest. “Nice to see you again, Agent Coulson. Thanks for having me along on this— I can’t wait to see what kind of technology we can prise off of this thing.” Slowly, his voice began to rise. “I mean, if this is some sort of satellite from outer space, or something bigger, or —”

“Indeed,” Coulson said, voice mild as ever, and Melville’s mouth shut with an almost audible snap, color flooding up his throat. With a quiet stammer and a flicker of fingers against Clint’s ribs and a stammered excuse he hurried off, lab coat flapping behind him in the heat.

Sitwell shook his head. “Your acolyte seems to have broken himself.”

Coulson smiled a bit ruefully. “He’s not my acolyte, he’s a brilliant young man who is going to help our teams come up with an answer for whatever that is.”

Sitwell snorted. “He’s a lovesick child who is surprisingly close with your current …” he studied Clint for a moment, and Clint lifted his eyebrows, ready for whatever epithet he warranted this time. “Partner of choice,” Sitwell decided on, which was remarkably less rude and much more permanent sounding than some of the other less complimentary names he’d come up with in the past.

Clint just grinned. “Randy Melville’s a cute kid. He likes to dress up as a scientist every now and then, makes great inventions that help out in the field, and some day he and I are going to collaborate on a Coulson fansite.” Well, two out of three truths weren’t bad, anyhow.

Randy Melville was one of Shield’s youngest scientists, an inventor who’d read way too many comics and watched too many movies and instead of deciding to kowtow to physics basically smiled and challenged it. He had come up with a number of Clint’s arrows, as well as helped with designs for some of the specialists’ suits.

“I look forward to it.” Coulson’s gaze dropped to Clint’s hand briefly. “Medical has gotten everything squared away, Agent?”

Clint’s grin froze on his face. He hated medical, even when it was something simple. Which it rarely was. They’d both spent more than their fair share of time in the doctor’s office, getting stitched back together or having something set. When they were lucky, it was a simple procedure, a mere stop on the way home. Usually, however, there were blood transfusions involved, and Coulson hovering, shouting from the doctors the hazy, foggy memories that came with the drip of anesthetics.

Coulson’s eyebrows drifted up, as if daring him to say something. Unfortunately, Clint had always been horrible at turning down dares. “Wanna come hold my hand?” His eyebrows waggled, and out of the corner of his eye he could see Sitwell shake his head in resigned horror. “Unless you want to hold something else?”

Coulson rolled his eyes. “You can take Melville with you. It’ll give you two time to co-op on my fansite.” His voice was dry as ever.

“Hey, uncooperative agents don’t get a fansite. At least not ones made by snipers.” He offered up a wounded expression, knowing full well that both agents would see right through it, and sauntered toward the tent with ‘Medical’ marked above the door.

Luckily, the bone wasn’t actually broken. The swelling would go down soon (aided by whatever ‘vitamin-filled’ shot SHIELD doctors thought was appropriate to give their agents to help with healing).

~~~

Clint stared up at the sky from the small window in Coulson’s room. He’d commandeered the small room, not that it mattered much. Now that everything was in full swing, Coulson and Sitwell would practically live in the command center. Scientist would scurry about them, and eventually data would be drawn. Clint was basically useless here, doing guard duty where there were more than enough men to keep things under wraps.

He tapped against the glass. Even with the sheets of plastic all around in what looked like some sort of ancient symbol (otherwise known as the building which surrounded the ‘satellite’) he still had a better view of the sky than he would have had from their apartment in New York. Even with the bright lights that lit up the compound. It was amazing, the bright spatter of white against the otherwise black sky.

He could hear the key scrape in the lock and fought the urge to turn from the window. The door swung open and he could tell it was Coulson from the quiet competency, the sound of his tread as he turned to shut the door then cross the tiny room to where Clint stood. “I’m not sure why exactly you brought me here,” Clint said, drumming his fingers against the windowpane. The ache in his hand had already gone down, diminished into a dull thrum of irritation more than anything more painful. Clouds had started to form, blotting out the starry night sky with ambivalence “I mean, the men you have here are more than enough to fight against the bumpkins in that small town. I don’t think—”

It caught him by surprise when Coulson gently tugged him away from the window by the nape of his neck and pressed their mouths together. Clint let out a small grunt of surprise and his mouth fell open under the pressure of lips and teeth. Coulson licked his way into his mouth, traced along Clint’s molars and along the ridges of the roof of his mouth with his tongue and turned what was usually an almost chaste action between them filthy and hot. Clint’s pulse spiked, and adrenaline coursed into his veins, pure and heady. After months of worry, hours of outright tension, this was emotional whiplash, the one-two combo of lust and love.

They rarely kissed— not because Clint had anything against it, or because Coulson was too unemotional or anything like that, but because it simply wasn’t an action that either of them found unduly sexy. They fell together often enough, but Clint preferred to latch on to the sensitive skin beneath Coulson’s ear that made him gasp and pant while Coulson could bring him off with his mouth in less than a minute, if he was truly motivated enough. They were both men of results, of action. Kissing, while nice, was not action.

Or so Clint had thought, all these years. Now he had the feeling like Coulson was holding out on him.

Clint wrapped one arm around Coulson’s waist, and tugged him close, slotting their bodies together with the ease borne of years of practice. One hand trailed trailed up to tease at the short hairs at the nape of Coulson’s neck while the other molded itself against the firm curves of Coulson’s ass and squeezed, using the extra leverage to grind their hips against each other. Coulson let out a quiet huff of air and hitched one of Clint’s legs up, dragging them that much closer to each other. His other hand caressed the back of Clint’s neck, slid around to gently grasp the side of his face and hold him in place. As if Clint was going anywhere. Coulson eased his mouth back just slightly, just enough so that he could trace the edges of Clint’s mouth with his lips, that he could nibble and tease. Clint kept them firmly seated together, kept nuzzling back until Coulson drew back, smiled, and asked, “Do you think that the bed is big enough to use?”

Clint laughed. He let his head sink forward, put his forehead into the place where Coulson’s neck turned into shoulder and just laughed. Because despite the frustrations, the inadequacies and the insecurities, every now and then life simply boiled down to whether or not the bed was big enough for sex.

It was the simple things in life.

Coulson gave a wry chuckle, traced his hands up and down Clint’s spine. “No,” Clint said finally, “that bed’s not big enough for a five year old, much less two fully grown men. I don’t know how you plan to sleep in it tonight.”

“You’ve managed all these years on SHIELD operations,” Coulson said mildly.

Clint lifted his head, planning on reminding him that he had spent most of those missions in the actual field or curled up in a chair, rather than in a bed. Not that Coulson needed the reminder. After all, they’d been together for most of those missions.

Unfortunately, that plan went to hell in a blaze of static and the crack of lightning. The walkie on Coulson’s belt went off, alarms around the compound chimed in to make their opinions know, and an instant later they were both bolting out the door into a monsoon. Clint headed toward the weapons locker, with Coulson’s voice ringing in the comm in his ear. “I need eyes in the sky.” Easy and familiar, even with the howl of wind and the anxiety that kept tugging at Clint’s stomach. He took a deep breath, thought about actually using a standard weapon before grabbing his bow, and set off for the crane.

Another day, another job. Everything else would fall together eventually.

~~~

And then Loki happened. And everything fell apart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now with added kissing! The may be the most g-rated thing I've ever written-- I'm not sure if that 's good or not, or if it'll stay that way, but there it is.
> 
> So this was ridiculously difficult to write. Seriously-- I actually skipped ahead and wrote half of the next chapter, so that at least shouldn't take too long. It also did not go where I'd hoped. It's also quite a bit shorter than the other chapters. I'm sure no one will mind :) 
> 
> Thank you again for sticking with this project. Comments and critiques are more than welcome.


	4. Find Me a Window-- Hell, I'd Even Take a Trap Door

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Which Clint deals with the Fallout, and the Avengers find a New Threat. 
> 
> (Other working summaries include: Where the author asks for a suspension of disbelief on her ability to discuss medical matters and attack movements)

The worst part about Loki playing around inside his head was how fucking good it felt. How right. It was safe, secure, like waking up on a day off when Coulson had brought his files or a book to bed with him, or relaxing over lunch in the helicarrier. One of those ridiculously domestic days, when they watched television and threw popcorn at each other. He had wanted to do all those things. Loki had said so. Clint had believed it, had needed it and cherished it. Dr. Selvig had been right; the tesseract wasn’t just knowledge, it was truth. It was all. It was his next op, his next target and each step required to attain it. It was his life, broken down and reassembled into a puzzle that was close enough to reality to satisfy him.

There was a small part of him, when Nat had bashed his head into the crosswalk, that had mourned the loss of total submission. Which, honestly, had made the whole deal twice as bad; Clint wasn’t that type, wasn’t the guy who needed someone to tell him what to say or how to feel. And only in the past few years had be become the type to even do what someone he trusted asked of him, no questions involved. But each thing he’d done while under the spell had felt right. Complete. Loki hadn’t been wrong: to be free from freedom wasn’t all bad.

Of course, then he’d woken up. And reality had been a bitch, sharp edged and oppressive and that horrible, horrible loss of control stopped being so right and became something that Clint wasn’t certain he could ever explain. It was that perfect high that ruined your life, the best lover who turned out to be married, the best idea that’s already been dismissed as impossible.

He knew the moment that the spell was lifted that something was wrong. He could see it in the set of Natasha’s shoulders as she waited for him to come back to himself, could see it in the stillness of her lips and her lack of instant, cleansing violence. But more than that he knew it from her repeated assurances of “you’re alright.”

Showed what she knew.

His head was still stuffy. Everything was still too bright; colors were too focused, greens and reds and blues too jarring against the bland backdrop that made up the rest of reality. He’d nearly panicked, so suddenly released from everything he’d known as home for the past few days. He’d gone under so assured in what he was doing and woken up a prisoner, tied down, adrift, unmoored, lost.

But more than all the physical sensations, more than Natasha and her silence and the restraints and colors, Clint knew because Couslon was absent. And he knew from past missions, from Minsk and Budapest and Sao Paolo that when things got rough, Coulson would be in medical with him whether as an ungracious patient or a hovering supporter.

He tried to ask how many agents had died, tried to ease himself into the situation as directly as possible. Like a band-aid. Unfortunately, he never even got the chance to remove the bandage at all, whether slowly and painfully or quickly and excruciating.

“Don’t do that to yourself, Clint,” and that brought it home. The bandage stayed on, festering and unclean. Natasha had always been so bluntly honest with herself. She had a running tally of every person she’d ever killed, of every SHIELD agent whose lives had been lost because she hadn’t been good enough, quick or smart enough, and she’d held herself to higher standards than even she was capable of fulfilling. To hear her offer a back door, a window, to excuse it all with that ridiculous line about magic and aliens and nothing they’d ever been trained for was tantamount to being told in blunt words that Coulson was gone.

Clint just wasn’t certain how far yet. Best case scenario, he had been sucked into some sort of inter-space time continuum thing. Because, barring initial suffocation and having his brains removed via his eye sockets by the vacuum of space, there was a possibility he’d return someday. Worse case scenario—

Fuck.

In the bathroom, he splashed cold water against his face and hoped for a coma. Maybe Coulson wasn’t dead. Maybe he was being operated on, or was hooked up to more wires or was being turned into a robot or was in cryospace or something. Anything for him not to be dead.

Too bad he didn’t even believe himself. _Hiding from the truth won’t help any._  A quiet voice in the back of his mind, barely even a thought, yet more alien then natural. The dread in his gut grew. Just like that damn spell. He was numb and shaken and there was no window. There would never be another window.

People often claimed heartbreak when their loved ones died. Clint had heard clichés about lost arms, hollow pits in chests and that undeniable feeling of total loss that obliterated even the will to live. Clint didn’t feel any of those.

He felt the most painful brand of numb he’d ever encountered. Shattered. Like the bits of him that worked and the parts of him that were useful were suddenly without purpose. This, he thought, and sharply colored edges of reality were tinged slightly by desperation, this is why I didn’t want to lose him as a handler.

He took a deep breath and lowered his head over the sink. The tap ran, the sound of water against the cool metal of the basin filling the tiny room around him. He took a deep breath, and then another and held it. He’d go back out, he’d do what Nat suggested. He’d move forward. He’d save the earth.

And, hopefully, he’d put that arrow through Loki’s eye.

~~~

He actually planned to do it. Clint had wanted that shot, had given it up to ensure Nat’s safety in the battle, had gone for the bigger picture, the better play, and promised himself that he’d get the kill later. Even if he’d had to break into SHIELD and shoot Loki in his cell, he’d do it.

And then Fury, the bastard, had shot that idea to hell.

He’d notified Natasha and Clint on their comms moments after Stark had fallen back through the hole in the sky, motionless and limp. After the Chitauri had keeled over, as Hawkeye had lain battered and twisted and gasping for breath amid a pile of broken glass. Communique through SHIELD’s direct channel, one which cut the other Avengers out of the loop. “Romanoff, Barton. I have an update on Agent Coulson’s condition.”

Clint stayed on the ground, blinking up at the ceiling above him. About twenty feet away lay the flopped over carcasses of three Chitauri soldiers, their weapons still pointed at him even in death. He could hear the slight gust of a sigh from Nat, and the whistle of the wind from the broken window, and somehow he knew he needed to be paying more attention to Fury than he was.

Because, in these circumstances? Update meant alive. Unless Fury suddenly decided to inform them that Couilson’s corpse had entered rigor mortis, it mean that he was alive.

Clint inhaled slowly and allowed Fury to convince him that shooting Loki today wasn’t in the world’s best interest. Apparently his unfinished business with the god would have to be concluded at some other time.

~~~

It was harder to step back onto the helicarrier than Clint had ever imagined it could be. SHIELD had been his home for years. He stood between Nat and Steve, chin up and eyes straight ahead and it did no good because he was fucking Hawkeye and could see everything. He noticed every sideways look, every nervous flinch, every person who refused to even glance in his direction. He noticed the furious, lip twitching glare that Nat sent back, and the steely, almost proud, overly casual thing that Steve was trying for (it really just made him look constipated. Clint still desperately appreciated it). He noticed the sneer from Hill and the pity from Sitwell, the analytical sweep that Raylan cast over him and the pure hatred from Clem. He saw Jones try and come at him before being confined by security, and he knew that Fury’s eye remained trained on him from the moment his booted foot stepped off the Quinjet. And none of it mattered because Phil Coulson had returned from the dead, even if he was currently masquerading as a vegetable.

He kept going, kept putting one foot in front of the other and moving forward. Medical came sooner than he had wanted, antiseptic white and scrubbed free of life. He navigated through it easily, moving with the familiarity that came from extended visits of his own through the public areas to the ICU waiting room.There, Fury lounged against the door to the surgery, hands folded behind his head and feet up on the chair opposite him.

Clint resisted the urge to kick the chair out from under his legs. He stared at Fury warily, then slid slowly down in his own chair. Nat copied his movement, perching uneasily on the edge of her seat. For a long moment, all three SHIELD agents simply stared at one another, silent in a room which had known the oppressiveness of waiting for years.

It was Steve who broke the stalemate, who didn’t have the years of trust they’d been forced to lay upon each other. “You said Coulson was down,” he said quietly, and there was an undercurrent of anger and hurt in the words. “That medical called it.”

“They did,” Fury’s gaze never left Clint’s. “I told them to uncall it.”

“You knew he might be able to be saved, and chose to guilt trip us instead?” He shook his head, face falling from angry to incredulous.

Fury finally let his eye slip from Clint to slide over to glare at Steve. “I did what I needed to to make sure the job got done, Captain,” he growled. “There was an invasion pending. An insane man who was planning on killing everyone he could think of that would hurt his brother. My best agents had fallen under a magic spell,” and he spat the word magic as if it were bitter tasting and poisonous, “physics themselves were falling apart, and you think I should have waited to ask how you felt about my plans moving forward? I needed the lot of you to act, Captain. You needed the push.”

“End justifies the means?” Steve asked quietly, voice almost pleasant but with a thin edge of steel hidden in the timbers Clint snorted under his breath, slid down in his chair so his ass was almost falling off the edge and tipped his head back, staring up at the ceiling. He wasn’t sure why they’d ever expected anything different. ‘The End Justifies the Means’ may as well be written in as the SHIELD standard motto.

Fury didn’t even try to defend it. “The world is safe, Captain. And all the other worlds have now see what we can do. It may have been hard, but it’s the best we can do with what we know is out there. This was the hand dealt us. I made the best play I could, with what I had at the time.” And honestly, Clint added mentally, scuffing the rubber sole of his boot across the carpeted floor, he doesn’t even care that we’re upset. There was no bitterness hidden at the edges of that thought, nothing trapped or hateful. It was just truth.

_And then you shall know peace._

He shook his head sharply, and Loki’s ghost disappeared into the frayed remnants of his mind. Nat was right, apparently; it would take time to flush Loki out entirely. But that didn’t make it any easier to deal with in the meantime. Not now, he thought and stared hard at the door, as if he could will the doctors to appear out of sheer determination. You can fall apart later.

Steve shook his head, but said nothing. Instead, he grabbed the back of the chair beside Natasha and drew it back against the wall, settling down with his long legs stretched out in the open space between the chairs. She said nothing in response, but leaned back slowly, her right shoulder brushing his even as her left hand settled suspiciously close to Clint’s thigh. There was the whisper of fabric on plastic, and a moment later he could feel Steve’s hand brush against the muscles knotted up in his shoulders. He exhaled sharply, and leaned into both of them.

Clint closed his eyes and focused on those two points, on that thin lifeline to reality. They sat like that, the four of them, silent and wary, until the door finally opened and a SHIELD doctor stepped out, exhausted yet triumphant.

Coulson was alive

Clint stood abruptly, Steve’s hand thrown off as he slipped past the doctors into the patient’s room. It was bigger than he’d ever rated during his period with SHIELD, regardless of the injury he’d come home with, filled with machines and a few plastic, uncomfortable chairs, all surrounding the bed like supplicants at an alter. He could hear the doctor’s hurried admission that this didn’t mean they were in the clear, that Coulson was in a coma and could still die at any time. “The longer he’s under, the less likely he is to make it,” was the basic summary as Clint came to a pause next to Coulson’s bed.

He could hear Nat walking behind him, could hear Steve’s heavier tread as he ducked aside from the room, speaking quietly into a cell phone that was suspiciously new. “One battle at a time, right?” he asked, before turning away from Coulson’s prone body to almost smile at her.

Nat considered him for a moment, silently. Then, slowly, she lifted one hand and set it down on his shoulder, fingers curling in sharply against leather and skin. “You should find something more comfortable, if you’re going to take up in here,” was all she said before retracting her hand and slipping out of the room, drawing Steve along with her as she left.

Clint sighed, stretched his neck, and sank down into a plastic chair beside the bed. They were just as hard as he remembered.

~~~

The other Avengers all filtered through at some point or another. Nat practically lived in the room with him, practicing yoga on the floor, or reading in the windowsill. Sometimes she vanished for a few hours, then come back exhausted and bruised, but more relaxed than when she had left. Once or twice she vanished for a full day, amidst hushed whispers and official static, coming back as silent as she left. But for the most part she’d taken up with him, another cautious sentinel.

Clint wasn’t entirely certain if she was guarding him or Coulson. There was a lot of anger in SHIELD, all of it understandable. He didn’t really care either way. Clint was grateful for her company, for the distraction of a card game during the day or the ennui of vodka when the evenings started to get too dark. She never asked about why he woke up in a sweat, the memory of a sharp pain in his chest that spreads throughout his entire body fading to a dull ache that’s with him even when the sun comes up. She never asked why he doesn’t take the night off and go home to their old apartment, where Clint continually saw Coulson lounging on the couch or could hear him nag when Clint forgot to pick up his towel after showering. She was simply there, and he would never be able to find the right words to thank her for it.

She would never accept it, anyway. Every now and then Nat would convince him to join her in the work out room, or to visit the mess hall for something to eat that, while disgusting, did not come out of a vending machine. But no matter what, Clint kept seeing himself returning to a room with a body, kept imagining Coulson dying, alone and unobserved. And so he’d take off, return to their room and let the steady mechanical beep soothe him.

Steve came in every day for lunch. He always brought something home made, something filling and nutritious. Clint wasn’t sure if it was a forties thing, a need to fill grieving people with food, or just because Cap liked to cook. Either way, he never turned him down. He too had grown up with memories of Captain America propaganda, and after years of living with Coulson it was almost a sin to shatter that hopeful, grateful expression.Clint didn’t know what Steve got out of this arrangement, but he couldn’t take it away, no matter what it was.

Thor showed back up a few days after carting Loki home, visiting on his way to visit the esteemed Dr. Foster in her new, highly sought-after laboratory. He spent the day laughing and telling stories about earlier triumphs. Clint had laughed along (it was impossible to refuse to be in a better mood when Thor was around), had shared some of the ridiculous amount of food that Steve had brought by that day, had shared his own exploits. When Thor left, there was a picture of a huge lizard-like, antler-bearing creature on the table beside Coulson, as well as two affectionate hand-print shaped bruises on Clint’s shoulders. Thor often had a habit of forgetting his own strength.

Bruce waited until the other Avengers had cleared out, waited until the end of the day to come by and pay his respects. He’d glanced over Coulson’s chart with a rueful expression before setting it carefully down and joining Clint in the hard plastic chairs. Nat had kept her place one the windowsill, but she joined in as the three of them spoke quietly until the conversation slowly tapered off.

Bruce stared down at the chart, then looked over at the bed. He seemed uneasy, but then again he never really did look like he felt relaxed anywhere. "I never really knew him," he said, a bit suddenly, then smiled in apology. "I mean, I met him on the Helicarrier briefly, but we never really spoke." another quirk of his lips. "Agent Romanov picked me up in India," his  gaze flickered toward her. Nat nodded once toward him. "So there wasn't a lot of time for us to talk before--" here he faltered, and glanced back at Clint sharply. "So he was a pretty good guy, then?"

Clint smiled in response, figured he'd thrown the guy a line. "Yeah, best agent in SHIELD, probably. He's basically been doing the 'Agent Agent' thing since just after high school." Coulson as a kid-- what a terrifying idea. They'd never really spoken much about their lives before SHIELD, though to be fair, they didn't really have much to talk about outside of SHIELD.

Which was really just sad. They'd only been living together for, oh, a few years and the only things that Clint knew about Coulson was that he liked Captain America and vintage  cars. And that he really liked talking about SHIELD missions while watching reality television. 

_Lightning is but a flicker of light, punctuated on all sides by darkness._

Bruce glanced at the tablet perched on the edge of the bed. “You don’t really leave here, do you?”

For a moment, Clint thought he was fishing for information, trying to figure out what he and Coulson were. Then he glanced at Banner’s face and saw the nerves rattling around. He wasn’t the type who fished around in other people’s personal lives. He was the type who asked questions for a reason. “I don’t want to miss anything,” Clint explained quietly. Nat had never asked why, had never needed to. And Clint knew it was ridiculous. It wouldn’t matter where he was. But the idea of being in another room when —if— Coulson finally, actually died was unbearable. Even though he couldn’t do anything, he still needed to be there.

Because he’d never forgive himself if Coulson actually died alone.

Bruce nodded, and Clint knew that, somehow, he understood. “I can rig your tablet to his machines,” he offered. “Set it up so that you can keep an eye on his vitals. You know, in case you get called somewhere else. Or if you need to exercise or something.”

Clint swallowed. Everything— the food, the pictures and the banter, Natasha’s silence and finally Banner’s quiet understanding. It was relieving. It was difficult to explain, but for the first time since Coulson had brought him to SHIELD, Clint finally felt as if he’d found somewhere to go. Figuratively speaking, of course.

Natasha’s feet slipped into his lap, and Clint grinned, a bit shaky but genuine. ”Yeah, that’d be nice,” he said once he was sure his voice would hold steady.

~~~

Coulson didn’t escape the notice of the rest of SHIELD, either. Fury, according to Nat, kept continuous updates on his well being stacked in a pile on his desk. He never came by after that first day, and had escaped the moment the doctors had pronounced Coulson alive but comatose.

“Alive, but sleepy,” Clint had muttered to Nat after the room had cleared. She’d shaken her head at him but smiled.

Hill had visited once, for about two minutes. She’d looked uncomfortable the whole time. Clint had no idea if it was because they’d fired shots at each other, or if it was the unconscious man she was visiting. Either way, it didn’t really matter.

Melville came every morning and sat beside Coulson’s bed, telling Clint stories about whatever had happened in the lab the previous day. He refused to speak about the attack, refused to mention the Dark Energy Lab or Loki. Each day before he left to go back to work, he’d wind his arms around Clint wordlessly, before hurrying out.

The other members were less kind. Thankfully, Jones never even walked by the room.

Clem glared down at Coulson for a long moment before switching his gaze over to Clint. “How are you still a member of this organization?” he asked bluntly. His leathery skin stretched even further into a frown, looking simultaneously painful and unreal.

Clint shrugged, ignored the spike in adrenaline that surged through his body and forced himself to remain relaxed in his chair. Behind Clem, Nat lowered herself from the windowsill, ready to step in if necessary. Clint wasn’t sure when he had started requiring assistance, but he didn’t really appreciate it. “You know Fury; he likes to keep odd knick-knacks around. I figure I’ll probably end up stuffed on his desk before too long.”

Clem grunted under his breath. “You realize the vigil is tomorrow?”

Clint winced. SHIELD members rarely had funerals. Instead, there were small gatherings to honor agents who had died in the field. Clint had gone to many of them during his stay with SHIELD. Coulson, unless detained somewhere overseas, never missed one. But this vigil, this ceremony, was to honor all who had died in both the Dark Energy Research Lab and the attack on the helicarrier.

Two things that Clint was directly responsible for. “Just make your point,” he said quietly. Nat shifted her weight. He could see the muscles working in her face— one of the tells that told how furious she was.

Clem crossed his arms in front of him. “I don’t care how guilty you feel about it. I don’t care if you think you deserve the penance of everyone hating you. I honestly don’t care. If you come to that vigil, I’ll kill you. And if that doesn’t work, if I'm deoted or fired, then I’ll put a hit out on you so that any of the large number of independent assassins around the world can kill you.” He leaned forward. “Stay away. I won’t warn you again.” And with that, he turned and left the room, pausing only to step around Nat’s stationary figure.

Clint breathed in slowly. He’d considered going, had thought about paying his respects to the people he had helped kill. The people Loki had made him kill. Was it his death count or Loki’s? Why did the difference matter, anyway?

 _Sentiment_ , the voice in his head scoffed.

“Brody died in the attack,” Nat said quietly. She came to perch on the chair beside Clint, her eyes raking over his face with far too much prescience. “He was one of the first agents down when the helicarrier was hit. Clem’s been trying to fill his shoes, but…” she shrugged. “Wet-works is a big area for just one person.” Especially when the person who you were covering for was your twin.

Clint let his head drop onto her shoulder, and tried to ignore the little voice in his head asking him if being free from freedom was so much worse than what he was currently going through.

~~~

Naturally, when Stark finally got around to showing up, it was both explosive and exhausting.

“So this is what passes for top notch health care these days?” Stark’s voice drew Clint’s attention up from his book, which had been opened to the same page for the past two hours. He blinked slowly, trying to acclimate his vision to something that was neither black and white print nor only two feet away from his face. Stark stood in the door, hands uncharacteristically close to his body, as if there were people lurking behind every door just waiting to hand him bloody, germ-infested things. “No wonder people want insurance— no one in their right minds wants to pay for this Lego's brand of equipment.”

“Let me guess,” Clint said, marking his spot with an old receipt and setting the book down on the edge of the bed. “You became an expert on medical equipment overnight.” He’d seen the footage. After Coulson had pulled through surgery, after the Doctor had come out in suspiciously pristine clothes and scrubbed hands and told Fury that SHIELD’s number one agent had lived, Clint had bunkered down in Coulson’s recovery room, ignoring the general idea of visiting hours and suggestion from medical staff to let Coulson rest (he was doing a damn good job of that anyway). He’d only left to bring a few things back with him: a small bag of clean clothes, an old book Nat had been trying to get him to read for forever, and a jump drive full of security files from the attack on the helicarrier. Because no matter how many times Nat counted him blameless, the fact remained that he had fallen under Loki’s spell and Loki had split SHIELD straight down the middle.

“Something like that,” Stark wandered around the small room, poked at a couple of old machines, tapped on the plastic line of the IV. He’d stayed away the longest, and Clint wondered if it was a guilt thing or if it was because he was the type who hated hospitals, and used that as an excuse to never visit the people inside. “This, though, is horrible.” Stark said, staring at the back of the EKG machine like he wanted to start unscrewing things and playing around inside.

Clint sat up a bit straighter. Personally, he couldn’t care less if Stark genius-ed his way through some other Intensive Care unit and started ripping out wires and installing all sorts of nasty AIs to ‘help’ people heal more quickly. But this particular IC room wasn’t on that list. “Is there a reason you’re here?” he asked. Screw the banter, screw dancing around a point until no one knew what was happening anymore and everyone felt like they’d lost. He just wanted a straight answer for the first time in what felt like years.

Stark blinked, pulled his gaze away from the machines, and focused on Clint. “Right. So the Avengers are a thing. Why are you here?”

Clint’s eyebrows went up. “Should I be somewhere else? Is there another battle going on somewhere that, somehow, I’ve managed to not hear about?”

Stark picked up Coulson’s chart and flipped it open to the first page. Cline suspected it was because he just wanted something to do with his hands. “I’ve almost finished remodeling the tower. Changed a lot of things around, made things a bit more respectable, things like that. Figured we could use it as a base. You know. Since we’re a thing and all.”

Clint laughed. It felt rusty weak, and he wondered if this was the first time he’d really laughed since Loki had twitched his fingers at him. “You mean you made us a secret fort that stands out in the middle of the city.”

“Sure,” Stark set the chart back down on it’s peg. It dropped off and rattled to the floor. Stark didn’t even blink. “Except it’s a Stark-Fort, complete with several levels of research departments, an archery range, several training rooms with mods to keep even people like Thor and Cap entertained, and a kitchen.”

Incredulous, Clint rescued the chart from under the bed and put it back on it’s hook. “We’ve been “a thing” for a week now,” he protested. “How is that anywhere near enough time to do all that?”

Stark sighed and threw his hands in the air. “Alright, so parts of it are still under development. I hurried the living quarters though.” He smiled, bright and white, sudden and sharp. “The kitchen never runs out of food, either. So if people need a place to stay— you know, if Thor doesn’t want to make the commute, and Bruce’s been hanging out— then that works out too. Each level is separate, but there’s a communal living area too. You know, if people want to actually talk to one another or something. All options are there. But I’ve had the building redesigned with a medical section,” he went on, his voice speeding up abruptly, “State-of-the-art everything. Even complete with that New Age mood crap that supposedly helps people heal a microsecond faster. Doctors have been hired, nurses are uniformed and ready, and there’s a cappuccino machine that’ll make a decent cup of coffee.” His eyes slid away for a moment, before returning to Clint. “There are better places visiting friends and family to stay also. If it’s a home-away-from-home for the Avengers, then it should be an actual home, right?”

Clint stared at him. “You want us to live with you,” he said the moment Stark paused in his ramble to draw breath. There was something appealing in the idea. He still couldn’t go back to the apartment, not without seeing Coulson’s ghost every time he put a fork in the wrong place. And SHIELD was about to kick him out of the medical bay soon. Still, the idea of living with the rest of them… “What, like a bunch of frat boys?” Thank any god that Natasha was out of the room.

Stark stared solemnly back at him. “Frat parties are a key part of our liquor economy. Without kegers, many brewers would be put out of business.

“You mean they’re your biggest competitor for brewer recognition,” Clint returned.

With a shrug, Stark headed for the door. “Let us know if you want to get out of here, and Pep will take care of it. I’m a busy man, but I’m sure I could work you into my schedule somewhere. Ask Pep though, she knows what I’m supposed to be doing better than I do.” And with an airy wave he was gone.

Clint sighed, and slumped back against the uncomfortable plastic chair. Getting out of SHIELD for a while sounded like a good idea. He just wondered what Coulson: Company Man would think about it if he finally woke up.

When.

_You have heart_

Clint screwed his eyes shut, and practiced breathing for a moment. “Come on Coulson. I kind of need you here,” he muttered, and if his voice cracked, or went a bit thin, well, it was only him and a room full of equipment that would notice.

~~~

It took the combined forces of Natasha, a threat on the world, and Bruce’s tablet app that finally got Clint out of the sickroom for more than a few minutes. And even then, he wasn’t sure it was worth it when he walked into the conference room, flanked by Thor and Cap to see Jones, resplendent in a suit that still managed to look greasy, standing beside a large monitor.

“Fuck, no,” Clint growled, and back-peddled into Bruce before spinning off to a safer, more solitary segment of the hallway. “No way in hell.”

Bruce frowned at him. His hands were shoved firmly into his pocket, and through the thick layer of khaki Clint could see him clench and relax his hands. “Not a friend, then?” he asked mildly, but Clint could see the hidden twinges of nerves in the twitches around his mouth and eyes.

“He said it was important,” Steve said, though he didn’t urge him toward the conference room. “Apparently, it’s on the same scale as Hydra was, back in the day.”

“Or it could be,” Bruce amended. “Supposedly, it hasn’t gotten that far yet. Some guy in some island in middle of the ocean, and apparently he somehow has the ability to end life as we know it.” The corner of his mouth twitched up. “At least it’s not space aliens.”

“No.” Jones had moved from his spot in the middle of the room to the door. His brows were raised. “It’s something a little closer to home.”

Clint shook his head, then barged into the room. “What, they ran out of decent agents to promote?” he refused to sit down. Jones as an agent was insulting. Jones as a level seven agent challenged the way the universe worked.

As if that didn’t happen enough.

Jones shrugged. “There were spots to fill, what with the high death count at the Dark Energy Research Lab, and the attack on the helicarrier.” He didn’t quite smile, didn’t quite point the finger at Clint, but it was obviously a near thing. “Clem has had this guy marked for years now. We’ve sent in several operatives, all of which have died.” He turned and walked back in to his monitor, thumbing on the power. “William Barbaro, about ten years ago, created a doomsday device, a large bomb that, to put things in the simplest terms, disrupts the human DNA sequence.” He frowned. “Our scientists have yet to either replicate or find a way to destroy it from a distance.”

Steve pulled a chair out, staring up at the monitor for a long moment before slowly sitting. A picture with the man’s profile, along with line of personal information flashed across the screen. Clint leaned against the wall, next to the door, as Bruce entered slowly, with a wary glance first at Clint than toward the other agents who had taken up position around the room. He lowered himself slowly, in the seat nearest the door. Natasha sat next to him, directly in front of Clint.

Thor walked directly up to the monitor, and tapped against the screen. “This device that you are worried about. Has he used it yet?”

“Outside of a few test runs on the natives of the island? No.” The screen flashed again, changing to schematics of a large gun. “He also created several smaller, slightly less potent versions of this device to serve on the field. These have been seen around the world. Raylan’s charted their movement through black market dealers across Russia and Europe, as well as a few in the United States.”

Natasha frowned. “He’s not selling to the governments? Just to the smaller groups?”

Jones nodded. “We don’t know if he’s trying to keep off the radar, or if he’s just interested in a different sort of chaos. But he hasn’t sold to any major players yet. Just the ones who will kill the most civilians right away.”

“And you read that as him trying to stay off the radar?” Clint demanded. He knew full well where this was going. A guy who could possibly start the next Hydra, arms being sold that were unstoppable, a base that not even the best trained agents of SHIELD could access… He could see the determination already sliding across Steve and Thor’s faces, the glare of the hunt in Natasha’s shoulders, something akin to resignation in Bruce’s slouch.

Jones glared right back at him. “I read it as a scientist we can’t get to bent on destroying the world. Which is the important point in all of this.” The screen changed again, turning into a series of images of the island and the central building. Apparently, Barbaro was a paranoid man; he’d built a fort in the middle of the island, complete with large surrounding walls and towers. Not imprenable, but also not a place that Clint would ever want to vacation at. “So, is this something we can ask the lot of you to step in on? Or do we have to wait until he’s gotten himself an army and is moving through downtown zapping civilians?”

“In our defense,” Clint flinched as Tony Stark breezed through the door, suit, sunglasses and all, looking far too relaxed for what should essentially be a war-room meeting. “We are Earth’s last defense. You know, we 'avenge things', not we 'stop things that will deserve avenging after the fact'.” He slapped Thor on the shoulder once, which was apparently Stark-eeze for ‘Hey buddy, welcome back to our realm,’ and plopped down in the chair between Bruce and Steve as if he owned it. “You guys knew about this for years, and didn’t say anything?” He almost looked offended. “Seriously, how can you keep a DNA-eating gun from me?”

“We asking you to contain the problem,” Jones said, one hand lifting to pinch at the bridge of his nose. “We’re not asking you to put repulsors on it.”

Stark sniffed. “It’s sad that you think that would make this thing better. Seriously, basic flight modification is all it really needs to get it mobile.”

Bruce braced his elbows on the table, leaned forward to brace his chin against his fists. “I thought you were out of the arms race?” There was the hint of a smile creasing the lines around his mouth. Clint’s own mouth twitched upwards. Coulson would have a aneurysm from all this, he thought. He’d spend half his time trying to convince the team they were needed, and the other half corralling Stark away from whatever remained of the technology.

And here was Jones, trying to do the same damn thing. “We want these things destroyed.” He sighed as both Clint and Natasha gave the same loud scoff, Stark openly laughed, when Steve’s eyebrow quirked up and Bruce just shook his head. Thor just looked confused. “Fine. What we want is these things in our possession. However, that seems to be something that the lot of you are going to oppose, and we aren’t comfortable with Stark taking them home either. So we’ll settle for their destruction. Do what you want with remains so long as there is nothing left. Burn them, shoot them into space, put them in the deepest chasm of the ocean. I don’t care.” He tapped the screen. “We’ll give you whatever you need to complete this.”

Jones pulled a briefcase out from under the table and opened it. He pulled out several manila envelopes, each one marked with the SHIELD logo. “All the information should be there. Look over them.” He stood back, glanced over the lot of them, and Clint didn’t miss the way his gaze deliberately skipped over him. “Wheels up in ten hours.”

“Did anyone actually agree to do this?”Stark asked as Jones walked out, eyes resolutely ahead as if he could pretend they would all just fall in line. Unfortunately, he was probably right. He’d had them practically since mentioning the man’s name.

“I’m not sure we have a choice,” Steve replied, pulling one of the manila folders open and flipping through the papers. “If this thing gets any bigger, then we’ll have a lot of trouble on our hands. And if there is no one else who can get in…” he shrugged. “I don’t see any other way right now.”

“Isn’t it strange, though? That SHIELD can’t deal with this on their own,” Bruce elaborated, glancing at Natasha and Clint. “Why wouldn’t they be able to do something?”

Natasha shrugged. “Depends. If they’re smart, then they’re refusing to allow any new members onto the island. The small arms dealers all probably have history, which are thoroughly vetted.”

“It shouldn’t be a problem, but SHIELD lost their best spy when they put Nat on Stark, and right now they’re strewn all over the place,” Clint added, trying to glance at the documents from across the table. Natasha rolled her eyes and spun one of the folders to him. He scowled but picked it up. Inside was a more detailed account of what they’d been shown by Jones, including a full dossier on Barbaro. “Hey, apparently this guy really likes sushi.”

Stark stared at him. “Is that the plan? Poison the man through sushi?”

Nat’s head tipped to the side. “It might work, but it’d take too long to determine who the suppliers are. Unless he fishes for his own, in which case we could try and poison the fish in the area, but unless there’s an inside man it’d take way too much work.” She scanned the dossier over Clint’s shoulder. “I vote for sneaking in. We can fly in undetected, get a couple of us inside, hit them hard and fast.”

Stark raised his hand. “Uh, except the majority of us don’t sneak. Bruce knocks down walls, and Thor yells battle cries when he hits people. Not to mention that the damn hammer practically sings.”

Thor frowned at him, but ultimately nodded. “It is true Lady Natasha. I am not the kind of warrior who sneaks around. A frontal charge would work best.” He slapped a map of the island down in the center of the table. “We are flown in over the center of the fort and hit them in this clearing. From there we can fan out and take out anyone in our path until we get to Barbaro and his devices.”

Clint shook his head. “They have guns that destroy human DNA. You two might be safe,” he nodded to Thor and Bruce, “and the Serum might make Rogers immune, but the rest of us will leave behind all of our belongings in a big pile of clothes and wallets. At least Stark’s will probably be upright.”

“Combine the plans,” Steve said. He tapped the sheet. “Drop Thor and the Hulk inside, send Agent Romanoff and myself in the back door, Stark keeps to the air providing support and keeping all outside members preoccupied, Barton keeps an eye on everything and makes sure that no one is blindsided by a weapon that makes them cease to exist. If necessary he comes in as well, or he joins the battle in the court yard.”

Nat nodded once, decisively. Thor grinned, and hefted Mjolnir above his head. Bruce took off his glasses and cleaned them on the edge of his shirt. Clint glanced down at the tablet in his hand. Stable. He hesitated, then nodded. “Good,” Steve said, and stood. “We’ll iron out the details on the plane.”

Stark leaned back. “So we’re actually doing this? Helping out the same organization that decided making weapons out of alien tech and lying to us was a good idea?”

“It’s our show, Tony,” Steve said quietly. “We choose this time. And honestly, I want this taken care of before it turns into something bigger.”

Stark tossed his hands in the air. “Fine. We’ll play their game. But if their agent decides to start barking orders in the field, I reserve the right to shoot him.” Steve shook his head and sighed. “Fine. I reserve the right to ruin his credit score and upload massive amounts of porn on his work computer.”

“Deal,” Steve said with a grin at the same time Clint scoffed and said “get in line.” It left Stark wagging his eyebrows and asking Steve’s opinion on what sort of porn he’d choose to put on Jones’ computer, while Bruce glanced over at Clint in concern.

Clint waved it off and headed toward Coulson’s room. He’d need to settle a few things before wheels up.

Stark caught him before he made it do th end of the hall. “Barton. Remember about the secret Stark fort? This would be as good a time to move him as any.” Stark grinned. “Unless you want to keep living in Coulson’s tinker-toy rehab room, I suggest moving in pronto. I’ll have Pepper start everything while we’re taking care of Dr. Zap-Em-All, and by the time we’re home we’ll have a nice, cozy new home.” He held out his hand. “Sound like a deal?”

Clint hesitated, and a small part of him wondered who had put Stark up to it. If Nat had dropped one too many hints about Clint being homeless and unwanted, if Fury had wanted them all under the same roof (so much easier to bomb a place if they were all inside, maybe?). But it didn’t really matter. He couldn’t really go home again. “Deal,” he said finally, and grasped Stark’s hand. “Does that make you my landlord?”

Stark rolled his eyes and pushed his sunglasses up higher on his nose. “As if I need your money. Get your shit together, Barton, and let’s go save the world again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for reading. This was supposed to take care of most of the rest of the plot, but after 7000+ words, I figured I'd split it up. Because this story isn't long enough already (I promise it will end someday).
> 
> Thank you again for sticking with it for so long. Please feel free to comment and critique-- I'm not sure if I'm happy with this chapter or not, but I can't figure out why I'm not satisfied yet.


	5. To Have and to Hold, That Precious Little Dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the team is less than effective, Clint wanders into rooms with other people in them, and everyone slowly drifts toward one another.

In all honesty, they probably should not have expected things to go smoothly. Clint wanted to blame it entirely on Jones. Hell, it was actually at least partially his fault. But, as Steve pointed out later, it didn’t really do any good to blame anyone.

Showed what he knew. Clint still had every intention of writing a scathing report and stapling it to Fury’s desk. He’d put someone else’s name on it, just to make sure it was read.

They’d tried to iron things out before arriving. It hadn’t really gone their way. Apparently, this team didn't need the help of the Glow Stick of Destiny to bicker at one another. Steve had presented several different ideas to the team. Bruce had shook his head at every single one until Steve had tossed out the general “Hulk stays back until civilians are all accounted for.” Which, according to Nat, would be hard to determine, as none of these guys were uniformed. Thor had stayed firm with a head on attack, while Stark had smart-assed his way through the discussion, pointing out that, with no aerial opponent, he could basically just run the whole thing and everyone else could sit back and relax.

Jones just smiled the entire time.

It was almost impossible to take this all seriously. While Cap had his training from plays used seventy years ago, and Thor had been in more battles than there were bottles of liquor in Stark’s closet, neither of them were SHIELD trained. He and Nat were brought up for this, were specifically bred and soldered for it. Taking orders from a man who didn’t have all the info— who had been carved out of ice months earlier— went against everything that Clint was.

Of course, the only SHIELD handler available was the same one he wanted to push out the cargo hold. Clint glanced down at the tablet in his lap, checked that all signs were normal, before returning to the argument.

And when everything seemed like it might smooth out— Stark stopped lone-wolfing everything and Steve started amending the plan to account for what he was hearing— when they’d landed and everything was ready to go, then Jones dropped a new factor in. Because the asshole couldn’t have just mentioned it earlier, or included it in his stupid briefing packet.

They’d always assumed that that any civilians would be in the village, safely on the far side of the island. They hadn’t counted on the village actually being inside the fort walls. Which had gone a long ways to counting Bruce out. He’d shaken his head, twisted his hands together, and completely refused. “I know he did all right in New York, but we don’t know who’s friendly and who isn’t . If the Other Guy gets confused, he’ll take out everyone. We can’t afford to kill so many civilians.”

The other Avengers had, at least partially, understood. There was a huge part of Clint's fragmented, Tesseract-chewed memory that recounted his attack on the campus, remembered him attacking Nat and Thor and the fighter jet on the helicarrier. He was uncontrolled, unpredictable, dangerous in a way that the others weren’t. Leaving the big, tall and green nuke back home seemed like the best thing to do for the moment, at least until they understood just how dangerous he truly was- both to the team and other friendlies. 

Too bad Clint was the only one seeing that; Stark was still trying to convince Banner he could control the Hulk when a few of Barbaro’s men showed up, guns and all.

It had all gone pretty much downhill from there. The rest of the mission was Jones screeching into the comms about at least trying to work as a unit, the Hulk slamming through the fort walls and destroying everything in sight while Thor and Iron Man were set on rescuing the villagers from both their captors and keeping them out of Banner’s way (thankfully, the intel was at least partially correct; Barbaro didn’t have any aerial attacks).

Clint kept an eye on everything in the square from his perch on the ramparts while Cap and Widow went in to try and locate Barbaro, or at least find out who he had sold the weapons to. By the time it was over, four civilians had been shot by their captors, Bruce was sleeping under a palm tree, Barbaro was no where to be found, and there was no evidence of the weapons anywhere. Which meant that all the rushing, the panic, the anger and fear, none of it had been worth it.

_The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life’s joy in a mad scramble for power._

Jones, from the slight look of almost satisfaction creasing his face as they filed silently back onto the Quinjet, apparently considered it to be a successful mission.

~~~

After the jet landed, it was only a short trip to their old apartment. Clint stood in the doorway a moment, ignored the tiny sliver of guilt that tried to make its way up his spine at how dusty it had become (it had never been dusty before, no matter how long the mission), and marched himself into their bedroom. For all that it was nicely (enough) decorated, their apartment had always had a sort of disposable feel to it. You never knew when the time to move on would come, something that had been pounded into Clint from an early age in the circus, and then again with how much SHIELD moved their agents around.

But, for all that it was meant to be disposable, the apartment had still been a home for the past three years, and Clint paused a long moment to glance around, to take in the bad art and the neat, orderly lines of furniture and knick-knacks. He grabbed all of Coulson’s Captain America memorabilia, figured that the cards were probably a lost cause after all of this, but Cap might be willing to sign one last poster or something, then packed up all of his clothes and any extraneous weaponry. He grabbed the file cabinet (and it was amazing that Sitwell hadn’t already come by and collected those files), grabbed the odds and ends of paperwork that made up SHIELD life, and got everything squared away. And then realized he couldn’t take everything on the subway and called a taxi.

Pepper met him at the bottom floor of what he had been calling “A Tower” since the battle, all legs and ridiculously tall shoes, and took him up the seventy-some odd floors to the suites. “We’re probably going to move R&D to a safer location,” she said as the numbers counted up slowly. “If this is actually your base of operations, or whatever it is that Tony’s named it, then having civilians wandering around is not going to be healthy for anyone.” She glanced over his belongings. “If you want to see Phil, we have him secured on floor sixty-four,” she suggested, and Clint tried not to flinch at her casual use of _Phil_. It wasn't jealousy, wasn’t because Pepper was using a name that had always felt a little verboten to Clint; it was the feeling that they weren’t even talking about the same person. Coulson was Coulson, he was SHIELD, he was Agent. He lived, breathed, loved and cursed the job, and to hear him called anything other than by his real name felt like a sin. “I can have your things delivered to your suite— which is located on floor seventy-one— while you visit with him.”

“Thanks,” he said shortly, uncomfortably, fingers caressing the tablet in his pocket. He hadn’t been expecting a suite. Clint wasn’t entirely certain what he’d been expecting.

She smiled, obviously accustomed to dealing with uncomfortable people during her time with StarkIndustries. “The doctors say he’s doing better. That’s a good sign— apparently, since he’s been moved, something has improved.” Though, from the tone of her voice, it was clear that Pepper had no more idea what was going on then Clint did. Unconscious was still unconscious, as far as he was concerned. “We’ve also set up a few other floors for the others, if they ever need a place to stay. Bruce is living on floor seventy, for example, and Tony’s playing around with a room for Captain Rogers up on seventy-seven.”

“Let me guess,” Clint said dryly. “Stark’s floor is located on level sixty-nine.”

Pepper laughed. “Sixty-nine is actually a part of medical. Right now it takes up ten levels, complete with labs, quarantine, and a small cafe.” She sighed. “This is one of the few times that man is thorough.”

There was a bad joke waiting in the wings for that one, but Clint kept his mouth shut. He wasn’t certain if it was because it would be rude to insinuate about her sex life so soon after meeting her, or if he was actually afraid she might stab him with one of those shoes. Either way, he smiled and nodded, and stepped off the elevator as it came to a stop on level sixty-four.

“There’s a common floor on eighty,” she called after him. “If you want to spend time with the others.” Clint nodded again, and the elevator doors slid shut behind him.

The new medical wing, while still pristine white and scrubbed within an inch of it’s life, was easily a thousand times more comfortable than the Helicarrier had been. But that would have been easy enough from simply not being on the Helicarrier anymore. This place did have state-of-the-art equipment, brilliant doctors, and included a nurse in a uniform who had threatened every person the instant they’d walked through the door with a needle to the eye if they tried to mess with any of the staff or patients. Clint had a feeling she’d met Stark already.

Coulson’s room itself was brightly lit and comfortable. There were beautiful, and probably priceless, paintings on the walls, the curtains matched the bedding, and there was a small bouquet of freshly cut flowers next to Coulson’s immobile form. Clint had the feeling that Pepper was to thank for that. He’d have to find someway to say things— Nat would know how. They’d become friends, or at least that’s what it seemed.

Clint collapsed into the chair beside Coulson, and sighed. He had a feeling that Stark told all of his designers to bring comfortable chairs. No matter what room it was, he’d spring for comfortable chairs. He relaxed back and sighed again, then pulled the tablet out of his pocket and checked on the things he couldn’t do anything about while on the mission.

Clint flicked through a few apps until he got to the security files on the tablet. He’d gotten through the attack on the Helicarrier, and he couldn’t help but be grateful to Nat when she’d taken him down en route to the detention quarters. Clint had managed to avoid killing both Hill and Fury, but he was glad that he’d actually been no where near the site where Coulson had gone down. The guilt was bad enough.

He’d forced himself to listen to Fury’s call about Coulson going down, had watched every single expression on the faces of each Avenger, from the instant guilt showing up on Stark and Steve’s faces to the pure fury that creased Nat’s. He’d watched every agent who had died on the attack as their lives ended, watched their final breaths, counted their last heartbeats. He ignored the snide voice inside his head that said it’s too late for that, and switched over to a more recent feed, to make sure that nothing had happened in his absence.

Naturally, Coulson hadn’t moved. Quelle surprise.

Fury had come to visit at some point, stood in the doorway and said something to the medical staff before nodding a few times and walking out. Melville had kept his morning appointments the whole three days they’d been gone, coming in with his breakfast and chattering away at Coulson like he could bring the man back with the sound of his voice alone. Raylan had come in once, had crossed over to the bed and touched Coulson’s hand before glancing at the security camera for a long moment and withdrawing. Sitwell had visited, bearing a huge pile of folders, and Clint wondered if his approach had been to taunt Coulson with paperwork until he decided to wake up. And then the doctors had bundled him up. Clint had no idea if it was normal to move a comatose patient, if the doctors had argued or hadn’t even seen the point in trying something new. He’d avoided them, for all that he was camped out in the patient’s room.

Even here, away from the oppressive, near hostile aura of the helicarrier, the day lengthened into one long monotonous cadence of doctors milling about, overfamiliar nurses taking notes and readings, of the mechanical throb of Coulson's pulse monitor and the whoosh of air constantly pushed into him. When the security footage became too much Clint took to wandering the halls of the infirmary, to examining the unused rooms and looking over the R&D going on right next door.  Most of the scientists working left him alone, barely acknowledging his presence with a glance. He couldn't tell what exactly they were in the middle of, if it was medical tests or something that Stark would be marketing in the next year.

~~~

And that was how Clint and Coulson became the third and fourth members of the Avengers to move into the tower. It also explained how Nat became a very close fifth, bringing a box of her personal affects in the day after they returned from their poorly-executed mission on the island. “Level seventy-two,” she said instead of hello upon finding Clint still camped out in medical. She frowned and perched on the chair beside him. “Have you been here all night?”

Clint shook his head. He’d gone to see his room, had moved his stuff around, unpacked his toothbrush and curled up on the bed. It had been like staying in an expensive hotel, too nice and pristine and he’d resisted the urge to mess something up just for the sake of doing it. His things were still unpacked by the front door, like a college freshman who isn’t quite sure he’ll make it in the dorms. “I saw my room. Rooms.” He shook his head. “You realize we have entire floors to ourselves? My apartment has three bedrooms. And a kitchen.” Granted, it was a small kitchen, but anyplace with a stove and a fridge of its own was basically self-sustaining. And technically there was a lot of space on the floor for the elevator, a storage area, as well as some maintenance rooms. Still, one suite a floor was extreme. Even for Stark.

At least it should have been. Clint had a feeling that this was no where close to extreme.

Nat nodded, and curled up her knees to her chin. The cut on her lip from the battle for New York had been reopened on the island, but was now scabbed over. “Two bedrooms in mine.” Her eyebrows, always expressive, went up. “Maybe Stark thinks we’ll want to have people over?” she suggested. “Or that you and Coulson need extra space.”

Clint laughed, thinking of their tiny one-bedroom place that had barely the room for a breakfast table and shook his his head. “Who wants to visit? Everyone we know has met Stark— they’ll probably jump out of a plane before they want to stay with him.”

“And yet here we are,” she murmured back. Clint grinned. Apparently the Island of Misfit Toys was a real place after all. Nat pushed to her feet, fingers tapping irritably against her thigh. “Come on. Let’s go see what this place has to offer.”

Clint’s gaze flickered toward a piece of equipment, slowly chiming along to the blood in Coulson’s body. Nat snorted, completely ungraceful for once in her life. “You have a direct line to him. Come with me for an hour. It’ll do you good to get out for a few minutes.”

“You’re just worried that you’ll run into Stark and he’ll say something Stark-like,” Clint returned, but tucked the tablet away into his hip pocket as he stood. Nat grinned in response.

“It’s a big tower. Plenty of places to hide a body.”

“Even from JARVIS?” Clint asked as they left Coulson’s room. The door slid shut behind them, quiet and solid.

The soft click of a speaker cut in before Natasha could respond. “It’s highly doubtful, Agent Barton,” JARVIS said primly, voice full of disdain. Clint felt the pull of a nearly-forgotten smile pulling at the edge of his mouth while Nat quirked her eyebrows at the ceiling and said nothing in response.

They ended up exploring level eighty, Clint’s tablet tucked away safely in his pocket. There was everything that the other floors had had, only bigger and more grandiose.The kitchen was well stocked, from snacks in the cupboards and a bowl of apples on a table large enough to feel the entirety of the Avengers and their families. There was a formal dining room that could host SHIELD’s Intel division (if they pretended they existed), and a row of beautiful guest rooms. And, Clint’s personal favorite, a huge gaudy living room.

Or at least it held some of the staples of a room designed for social gatherings— a giant television, a couple of over-comfortable couches, a coffee table— but the rest of it seemed like it had been pulled from a museum. Expensive statues lined the entry, there were ferns growing near the window, and Clint was positive that the chandelier above the sitting area was worth more than his yearly salary. It was beautiful, pristine, shiny in an almost untouchable way. “It’s the most ironic room in the tower,” Nat said quietly, running a finger over one of the statues. “I bet Pepper was involved.”

There was an archery range twenty floors down that took up nine floors, three training rooms that each took up four floors, and levels with labs. There was Stark’s workroom, walled off by a line of glass and JARVIS apologetically informing them that they couldn’t enter without ‘Sir’s’ permission. There was an Olympic sized swimming pool and a gym with ten sets of every piece of gym equipment known to mankind. “Apparently, none of us could be expected to wait for someone else to finish up,” Clint said wryly as he stood between two matching treadmills.

Nat swung herself up onto a set of uneven bars, lifted slowly up into a hand-stand, then let herself swing down to the floor. “It’s Stark. I’m just surprised he doesn’t have a gold painted set of each with his name emblazoned on the side.”

“Diamond encrusted.” Clint snuck a glance at the tablet. Nat stretched and glanced over his shoulder. He could see her eyes darting about the statistics, the dip in her brows, the pull of her mouth before everything ironed out again into the smooth, marble-esque front she had always presented the world with.

~~~

After that, it became easier to venture out for brief moments of time to the rest of A Tower. He ran into the other Avengers who lived their often enough. Bruce would wander up from his lab, a drowsy, unfocused gleam in his eyes. Stark often stumbled around in either a t-shirt and jeans while covered in grease and motor oil or a suit that probably cost more than any car Clint had ever driven. Pepper meandered through the halls, the click of her heels preceding her wherever she went.

Thor showed up a few days later, empty-handed except for a giant vat of alcohol slung over his shoulder and a grin large enough to be seen from space. Clint saw him a few times in passing through the common rooms— the big guy had seemed to instantly make himself comfortable, no matter where he went.

Nat mostly came and went at frequent intervals, staying a night in the medical ward with Clint or reappearing the next day on the main levels to eat lunch. She was such a constant in the chaos evolving around them that when she didn't show up for nearly two days it felt wrong, defective. When she finally reappeared, scraped and bruised, Clint said nothing, not even when seh curled up on the overpriced couch and slept for the next twelve hours. Apparently, SHIELD was still employing the Black Widow.

Bully for her. Clint hadn't heard a damn thing since they'd returned from the farce that was Jones' mission. He wasn't sure how to take that, if his paycheck was going  to stop disappearing into his account without notice or if they'd decided that he'd earned himself some sympathy leave. Or perhaps that other senior agents were simply using different, less qualified snipers. 

_You mewling quim._

Fair enough. 

The lot of them began to fall together, awkward and unsettled, totally unsure of what they were doing. However, it wasn’t until he ran into Pepper and Nat laughing quietly in the kitchen over breakfast that Clint realized that the tower was more than just a place to roost for a while. Oddly enough, the thought came to him as he rounded the corner to see Nat, clad in an old pair of his boxers and a shirt of Coulson’s that Clint thought had been lost years ago that he realized that this could be home. He had no idea why it was that image that stuck out— he’d seen Nat dressed every way possible. He’d seen her naked, unclothed. To see her now, in her sleep-wear and without any make-up, was nothing too far out of the ordinary. 

And still—

_It burns you to have come so close._

Thor wandered in, ecstatic and eager to know what was so interesting, and Clint disappeared back down the hall.

~~~

Steve was the last to show up, quietly, without any of the bells and whistles that had accompanied him throughout his stay in the twenty-first century (Clint remembered pulling him out of the ice, and all of the running around that had come with that lovely little venture). In fact, he made almost no ripples at all as he slipped into their lives in A Tower. Instead of making a grand entrance like Thor had, or being followed about the place like Bruce (Stark had no concept of personal space— apparently, guys who turn into balls of rage just after writing long papers on quantum physics were in now), he simply showed up in the kitchen one evening, sipping beer and staring out at the New York skyline.

He was still enough that Clint had nearly made it to the fridge before being aware he was in a room with someone. “Sorry, Cap. You want some privacy?”

He’d planned to just back right back out and order take out. The hollow, sunken gleam in Steve’s eyes was unnerving. With his plaid shirt, khaki pants, and that stupid, old-fashioned curl in his hair, it looked like someone had cut him out of a forties postcard and stapled him onto the front of some modern designer magazine. He practically looked sepia. Unfortunately, Clint’s good intentions (or awkward social habits— either one would do) were maligned by the growl emanating from his stomach.

Steve shook his head, and the dark glaze lifted just a fraction. “Grab some dinner. You’re probably not eating very well in medical.”

“There’s a cafe,” Clint objected as he searched through the cupboards. The Pop Tart stash had been severely depleted, even though it’d been less than a week. He grabbed a few packs, nicked a beer from the fridge, and on some sudden impulse, slid a chair out and sat down. “I mean, it’s closed down most of the time because it makes no sense to have a cafe on a floor with a single patient, but hey. Cafe.” He took a bite of Pop Tart.

Steve shook his head. “You think he just looked at some hospital schematic and replicated it?”

Clint shrugged. “Who knows. Stark throws money around for the sake of doing it. He probably tells his designers to make him the most expensive whatever, and then throws more money at it just to make sure no one else could ever afford it.”

Steve smiled, and glanced out the window. “I think it’s more than that. He’s made a home for us all here.” The hollow look flickered back across his face, and he looked down at the table, uncomfortable and edgy.

Clint took a drink from his own beer.“What? Let me guess— you got stuck in some authentic, WWII-riddled apartment. With propaganda posters.”

“He has one of me punching Hitler,” Steve complained, then dropped his forehead into his palm as a startled laugh tore out of Clint. It felt rusty and splintery, like he was using a muscle that had been long forgotten. Steve’s mouth quirked up momentarily, then he sighed.

“It’s like being in a time capsule,” Steve admitted quietly, with a guilty look around the room. “I mean, I’m glad he put all the effort into it and all, but I kind of feel like I’m still being swaddled or something.” He lifted the beer to his mouth, hesitated, then lowered it back down, untasted. Clint put his own bottle down on the table and glanced at the tablet he’d set on his thigh. All signs stable.

“The thing is,” Steve said slowly, “that I’m here. I can’t go back.”

The corner of Clint’s mouth quirked up. “Yeah,” was all he said, then threw back the rest of his drink. That was something. There were reasons that there was nothing from his life before decorating the walls of his apartment, and reasons that everything he owned for himself could fit into a single shoe box. Sometimes, no matter how good a certain memory was, or how bad another set of them were, it was worse to dwell in the past than it was to concentrate on the now.

~~~

It shouldn’t have been a surprise, though, to find Steve the next day bearing a steamer trunk full of his things into one of the guest rooms on the common floor. “Did you get evicted?” Clint asked, more curious than anything. Though if being evicted meant moving to another room he didn’t have to pay for, then hell. Evict away.

Steve shook his head. “No, one of the pipes burst in my room. My rooms are flooded.” The left side of his mouth twisted up almost painfully. “Everything was drenched— my old dress uniform is probably unfixable. Tony said he’ll figure out the problem, but until then I’m stuck up here.”

Clint glanced in the guest room. While it was a bit smaller than the cavern sized rooms that the personal floors had, this one was still bigger than any room Clint had ever had before. It even had it’s own bathroom, which was probably a plus. No chance of running into a half-naked Cap on his way to the shower. If Coulson ever woke up, he’d mourn the lack of opportunity. “Not a bad set of digs, though. Stark going to move you back in to the old place when he’s done?”

Steve set his box down just inside the door, and ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah. Although,” and there was just the barest hint of a smile hidden behind the stoic set of his jaw. “Tony says he can’t get some of the old things back. Apparently I need to be a bit more modern, anyway. Accept the new century, as it were.” Steve laughed outright. “I still have no idea what a meme is, but apparently I’m becoming one of them and it’s pathetic.”

“Maybe a little,” Clint agreed.

Steve shook his head, and ducked inside his room. Clint headed down toward the lovely giant television, then slowed, considered. “JARVIS? You’re always on, right? No sleep mode for you, or non-stalker mode, or whatever it is that Stark programed you with.”

“On the main level, that would be correct. I am monitoring each room in case of trouble. However, the suites are different. Each level is set to privacy mode; I am dormant, but can be called up in case of an emergency.” JARVIS replied.

“And Stark can see these clips?”

“Sir is able to review any of my footage. He specifically altered my protocols on the private levels, though, so that he is unable to view anything.”

“Interesting,” Clint murmured. Up ahead, he could hear Bruce asking something and Thor bellowing “Nay!” in response, followed by a long line of words that no Midgardian could ever hope to pronounce. Clint glanced at the tablet, followed the beat of Coulson’s pulse for a moment before slipping in to join them.

~~~

Naturally, the strange, preternatural calm that saturated A Tower wasn’t to last. Things were too brittle, to much on edge, but to be honest, Clint didn’t think it would be Stark’s love life that would herald it.

He was stalking the main level of the tower, where it wasn’t as lonely as his own room, or as depressing as Coulson’s when he wandered into the living room to see Stark sprawled out in the dark, drinking scotch straight from the bottle. “Sorry,” Clint muttered, ready to withdraw and check out the television on another day, “Didn’t realize that this room was occupied.”

Stark waved at him, the motion barely visible even with the hazy glow of the arc reactor. “No worries. Just…” his voice trailed off for a moment and Clint realized that this might be the only time he’d ever seen the man like this, wordless and quiet. Idle curiosity drew him closer. “Just hanging out,” Stark apparently decided was the appropriate answer, then reached down to the floor beside his chair. He pulled a bottle of scotch with some name that Clint didn’t recognize and took a long pull from it.

“I hate this room. I shouldn’t hate this room; it’s where the TV is. But I do.” Stark glared up at the chandelier “I always think that stupid thing is going to fall down. You know, when Thor is excited about that show that he calls ‘Crowning the Most Annoying Child’ or something. Or that I’m going to get a call from the museum about those stupid statues that Pep—” his voice stuttered for a moment, then regained speed, “thought would be a good decoration.”

Clint nodded slowly, then reached for the bottle. “It’s an ugly room,” he said and took a long pull himself. The liquor was smooth, and went down with barely a burn. He passed it back. “I always figured having lots of money meant you didn’t have ugly rooms.” He gestured to the bottle. “That’s good stuff.”

Stark let out a short bark of laughter and shook his head. “Don’t sound so surprised. I have over twenty years of drinking stuff that’s worse for me than some twenty—” he held up the bottle for a moment, then nodded “—two year old scotch. Trust me, everything in my liquor cabinet is good. I’m known for more than just plummeting my stocks forty points overnight.”

“I hear it was fifty-six.”

“The point,” Stark continued before the sentence had entirely left Clint’s mouth. “The point, Legolas, is this room. This ugly, ugly room. With a chandelier. I mean, who puts a chandelier in a living room? Do people do that?” Clint sat down in one of the overstuffed chairs and said nothing. “I don’t do that. It was supposed to be some formal room, Pep wanted it to be somewhere to entertain visiting CEOs and ambassadors and other important guys who would earn more money for StarkIndustries.” He swirled the bottle around in his hand, sending the liquor up the sides of the tinted glass. “But that wouldn’t have been comfortable to hang out in. And Pepper couldn’t stand to see all of the work from before disappear into —” He shrugged and tipped the bottle back, swallowing deeply. “Who wants to watch “Crowning the Most Annoying Child” in a room with a chandelier, anyway?”

Clint nodded, slowly, and settled more comfortably into the chair. The room was lit only by the lights from the city around them and Stark’s reactor, casting a hazy blue glow over the room. “Coulson hated those shows,” he said quietly, because when someone else tips their hand like that, you can at least show a few of your own cards.

“What, you mean that Coulson’s horrible TV viewing stopped only with SuperNanny? He never tried watching those stupid we’re-so-rich-that-they-gave-us-our-own-show series? I can totally see the two of you settling down at night to watch Cribs, or some Real Housewives shit.” His brain seemed to catch up with his mouth then, and Stark sighed. “Probably not the best thing to say to a guy who’s partner’s in a coma, right?”

The grin felt frozen in place for a moment, then Clint sighed. Running from danger wasn’t really his style, anyway. Better to crash into it head on, to not think about what it felt like later, when the glass rained down around you and everything felt completely crippling. “No, it’s fine. Besides, I think Coulson only watched SuperNanny so he’d have an idea on how to deal with junior agents. And me,” he allowed, lips twitching up into what felt like a rueful smile.

Stark reached down behind the chair and drew out a small tumbler. He poured an unhealthy amount into it, then passed it over to Clint, who accepted it more out of reflex than any urge to actually drink it. “It’s only alcoholism if you’re drinking alone,” Stark announced, then held up his bottle. “To Agent Nanny’s recovery, this ugly room, and getting so wasted that none of it actually matters anymore.” He hesitated, apparently wanting to say something else before shrugging and taking a long sip from the bottle.

Clint followed suit. “You know, if you’re going to drink away a break-up,” he ignored the way that Stark’s spine straightened noticeably, the hurt that was suddenly frozen at in the sharp planes of his body, “then you have to do it right.” He drained away the rest of the scotch, and set the glass down before leaning forward to brace his elbows against his knees.

“Is this some sort of SHIELD skill set?” Tony asked, collapsing down into his chair so his ass nearly slid off the seat. “Or some class they teach? Dealing with Heart Break 101? Let me guess— day one covers how to mope at people’s bedsides and the proper paperwork to drinking to oblivion.” To give him credit, he winced at the same time that Clint did, and glanced down, in what was probably the general direction of Coulson’s chambers in the medical wing. He opened his mouth, closed it, then glared at the bottle of scotch.

Clint looked at the tablet on his knee. All signs stable, everything reading normal. He shrugged, and the tug at his chest fell back into something a bit more manageable. “Long practice, actually.” Misdirection and snark— the two best serving skills in any spy’s repertoire. “My longest relationship is now with a guy who’s masquerading as Sleeping Beauty.”

Tony chuckled, and the stab of guilt bled from his features into something quieter. “So tell me, Sir Archer of SHIELD, how does one appropriately deal with heart break?” He tried to raise the bottle to his mouth again, and probably wouldn’t have had any trouble with it if Clint hadn’t slipped from his own seat and confiscated the drink.

_And you would appear as a friend. A balm._

“Simple,” he said and corked the scotch. “You drink the cheapest, worst crap you can find, and burn all the things they left behind.” He eyed the statue warily. “Save for priceless, ancient pieces of art, probably.”

Stark, with far more grace than Clint would have ever given him credit for, slid from his chair and lifted to his feet. “Burning things, while fun, may not be the best idea with Spangles, Stabby, and the Other Guy downstairs,” he frowned. “Upstairs. Wherever they are. Besides, I have a better idea.” He raked a hand through his hair and grinned. “How do you feel about sledgehammers?”

~~~

He woke the next morning (afternoon? He wasn’t entirely certain) to Natasha and Thor leaning down over him. Entirely too close, entirely too much in his personal space. Clint groaned and flapped his hand at them. “It’s way too early to be awake.”

“It’s two in the afternoon,” Nat told him, lowering herself to sit cross-legged on the floor beside him. She still wore his old boxers and a tank top that had obviously seen better days; obviously, despite her disdain for Clint’s waking habits, she hadn’t been up for too long herself. He could see Tony across the room, sprawled out against the side of the couch, head tilted at what couldn’t have been a comfortable angle. Steve knelt beside him, one hand on his shoulder, speaking quietly.

Thor grinned down and sprawled out beside him. “My friend, you should have told me the two of you were enjoying the night! I would have come with a selection of Asgardian ale that I brought back last visit; it would have been a grand evening!”

Clint laughed, then groaned as the drums inside his head pulsated. “I was already trying to keep up with Stark— if you’d been there, we all would have ended up in the hospital for liver failure.”

Thor blinked. “Is this a common Midgardian ailment?” he asked, and Clint swore to never try Asgardian mead, no matter how delicious Thor claimed it to be. There were enough dangerous things in his life— spontaneous organ failure did not need to be one of them. He’d leave that to Stark.

Steve had apparently given up on waking Stark, and had scooped him up off the floor. “I’m going to take him to his room so he can sleep this off more comfortably,” he said, his voice a stage whisper. Clint gave him a thumbs up, then winced as Thor agreed mightily that that was a good plan. Stark didn’t even stir.

“Did you two decide the room needed a new look?” Nat asked, a small twist pulling the edges of her lips up. Clint shifted around as best he could without actually lifting his head, and surveyed the damage. They’d pulled plastic sheets over anything worth keeping, which to their drink-addled minds was apparently limited to a small vase, the rug, and what appeared to be the corner of the room. Luckily, they’d also managed to cover up those two ugly statues. No use in making Pepper anymore upset then she probably already was.

They’d also tried to cover up the large TV, but unfortunately it hadn’t survived what Clint dimly remembered calling “Sledgehammer Warriors of the World Doing Battle For the Sake of the War.”

Clint would mourn that television until he died.

The rest of the room looked about what one would expect if two drunk guys got a hold of sledgehammers and went to town on it.The polished wood floors were now cracked and chipped, if not outright dented. Two walls had holes in them, the couch was missing all the stuffing in the middle cushion, and two of the paintings were hanging from the chandelier, which was sitting where the coffee table had once stood.

Clint couldn’t even remember what had happened to the coffee table. And there was enough debris around the floor to tell if it was still where it had once stood, smashed into bits, or if they’d given in to the idea to toss something off the balcony (though to be fair, he did dimly remember JARVIS pointedly sealing all the exits to anyplace with more than a one-foot drop).

“I think we decided to get drunk and destroy things,” he admitted, and dropped his head back down. The crunch of glass under his ear made him wince, and then Thor was pulling him upright, which was definitely not the direction he really wanted to go.

“Come,” he said simply. “We shall find you a nearby bed to slumber upon, and there will be coffee when you awaken.” He pulled Clint’s arm over his shoulders, hoisted him toward the door, then hesitated. “And perhaps some of those little pills that Anthony is so fond of?”

Oh dear God, Clint thought, and hoped that whatever Tony had been popping had at least safe, if not legal. Natasha assured Thor that she’d find some painkillers, and then he was being tugged down the hall to one of the spare bedrooms that were housed on the main floor. Thor tipped him into the bed, Nat forced two pills and an entire bottle of water down his throat (and Clint thanked every deity he could remember might have existed that the whole thing didn’t end up regurgitated on the floor), and the lights were turned off and he was alone, drowning in a sea of blankets that smelled like flowers. Or perfume.

Perfume scented flowers.

Clint twisted around and drew the comforter around so he was wrapped up like a burrito, too tired to get up and slip between the sheets like a normal human being. He sighed, closed his eyes, and only gradually became aware of something hard and flat digging into his thigh. He grunted, dug into his pocket, and withdrew the tablet which had, miraculously, survived their redecoration attempts. Clint’s thumbs grazed across the dusty screen, and he pushed the button to turn it on.

The black screen gave way to brilliant white light, glaring in the cool darkness of the guest room. Like always, it booted up to show the last app used, which in Clint’s case, now that he was free of the helicarrier and away from the constant reminder that entailed, was Coulson’s vitals.Which would have been comforting, to know his one time away from his post for something other than work and saving the world had been harmless.

Instead, there was nothing. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that took longer than expected. Hopefully, the next one won't take as long-- I have to finish this before November starts (all hail the national novel writing month). 
> 
> As before, thanks so much for taking the time to read this. Feel free to comment or review-- I'm positive I've made some sort of extremely stupid mistake (because I am the champ!). :)
> 
> Chapter title borrowed from Sarah McLachlan's "Wait"


	6. Time for a Few Small Repairs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Which tests are run, deals are made, and giant wasps threaten New York.

For a long moment, Clint wasn’t certain how to react. Slowly, he sat up, and stared at the page in front of him, at the empty charts and unchanging numbers. Alright. So it could be something benign. The nurse could have unplugged something important. Thor could have suddenly started radiating some sort of Asgardian aura that blocked signal. Stark could have regained consciousness, started tinkering in his lab, and blown something up that took out the Internet for the entire city.

Ha. As if Stark could survive a few hours without the ‘net. Back-ups of the back-up sort of situation there. That left something else entirely.

It wasn’t until he was slapping the button to call the elevator that Clint realized he’d even pulled himself out of bed. He hit the button a few more times, glaring at the slowly dwindling red numbers above the doors as the lift inside whirred to life. Naturally, this would be the one time that the elevator took forever. He felt jittery, all too much energy and adrenaline, and he kept tapping his foot against the cool tile of the hallway.

And then realized that he wasn’t alone.

He turned sharply to see Bruce, glasses in hand, watching him with a frown. Clint swore softly. He had a feeling that he looked less than peachy— he’d been hung-over before, knew exactly what he looked like when that happened. And none of them really needed the Other Guy to weigh in with whatever was going on. Clint forced himself to slow down, pressed the toes of each foot firmly to the floor, shoved his hands into his pockets.

For his part, Bruce continued to live up to his breathtaking-anger-management-issues reputation. “Oh. Agent Romanoff said you were— she said you’d be asleep for a while,” he said, an awkward grimace flashing briefly across his face.

Not for the first time, Clint wondered how long it would be before Bruce called Nat anything other than her official handle. “Yeah, looks like I woke up early, Doc. Bed was probably too soft or something.” Behind him, the elevator dinged, a prelude before the doors slid open with a quiet sigh. Clint edged backward, hoping fervently that Bruce hadn’t been waiting to go downstairs or anything. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep steady, and the thought of being trapped with the Hulk in the elevator was nightmarish.

For his part, Bruce seemed happy to let him go on alone. “Glad to see you’re feeling better,” he said, slipping his glasses into his shirt pocket. His eyes followed Clint’s hand as he jammed the button that would take him to the sixty-fourth floor. He opened his mouth, hesitated, then nodded once in farewell. The door slid shut, blocking Clint’s view of Bruce’s hands twisting at the hem of his ill-fitted dress shirt.

By the time Clint reached medical, his heart was pounding in tandem with his head and there was nothing but noise. Doctors were rushing around. Nurses, uniforms and all, were barking orders and moving equipment. There was chaos exploding from the plain white walls that had been so peaceful before. Clint paused, gazed down the hallway, and took in everything, the bustle and energy and at the end of it all, just beyond the crowded hallway with machines and and people was Coulson’s bed, the destination at the end of the world’s brightest, most populated byway. A doctor stood near the door, a clipboard in hand, and for a moment everything was too still, despite the chaos surrounding him.

And then Coulson’s foot twitched.

Clint shut his eyes, prayed to a god he didn’t truly believe in for it not to be a doctor adjusting him, or some reflex shit or anything else other than what it should be and pushed his way down the hallway. The doctor was just stepping out as Clint barreled up t the door. He grabbed onto Clint’s shoulder before he could shove inside. “Agent, there are still a lot of tests we need to run—”

“Is he okay,” Clint interrupted, eyes still focused steadily on the door. There was no movement, no sound, no machine, no whisper of air passing through tubes.

The doctor hesitated. His gaze flickered toward the door for a split second, and he pulled the edges of his mouth up in something Clint realized was supposed to resemble a smile. There was a distinct aura of discomfort, even as the doctor patted his shoulder. “Go on in and see him. I have a few more things to set up, a few more things to take care of, but take a few minutes with him. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” And with that, he turned and headed quickly down the hall, shouting at a nurse who was running a machine that looked suspiciously like one of the sets from MST3K down the hallway.

Clint took a deep breath and without thinking about it, without taking the time to ask himself if this was really how he wanted to find out, he hurled himself toward the door. His palms connected with the solid wood, his sneakers scrabbled against the white tiles, and then he was in, staring at the bed for what was possibly the first time since they’d first learned Coulson hadn’t died on the floor of the detention facility.

Well. Died officially, anyway.

Somehow, despite all of the hours he’d spent beside Coulson, first on the helicarrier and then here in the tower, Clint had managed to keep from really looking at him. He’d been aware of Coulson, had known that body lying prone beneath those crisp white sheets. But it’d been too sharp, to harsh to look at him fully, incubated and pinned in place with an IV. It had never really looked like Phil Coulson, Agent of SHIELD, indestructible. Sans scepters, apparently.

Now, he stared at the bed and was greeted with the sight of Coulson, head tipped back, eyes closed. The bed had been inclined so that he was partially sitting up, face tipped up toward the ceiling as if as if awaiting benediction. He still had the IV sticking out of his hand, was still wrapped up in his johnny shirt. Clint’s chest seized, and he let out an audible breath.

And then Coulson’s eyes blinked open, the same brown they’d always been, quiet and unassuming and full of life. “Barton. You’re late,” he said, as if Clint had just waltzed into his office in the middle of SHIELD headquarters on some random day that ended in the letter Y.

And it was so quintessentially Coulson, the same as if it had been any other day, that it made Clint wince. As if he hadn’t just spent the last month prone on a bed, and shouldn’t there be some sort of degradation, some confusion or muscle sagging, or anything that might make him look like he’d pulled the world’s most awkward Rumpelstiltskin? “Not funny, Coulson,” he said, shutting his eyes. A little flare of guilt spiked through him, pulsed in his gut. Clint had wanted to be there, whether he woke or— wanted to be there, so that Coulson wouldn’t be alone, wouldn’t open his eyes to the bland white ceiling or some doctor he’d never met. So that if he died—

_You think that saving a man no more virtuous than yourself will change anything?_

There was the whisper of fabric and a soft thud and Coulson’s hands, solid, unyielding, and nothing Clint could ever forget were clasping his shoulders. Clint opened his eyes slowly. Coulson, face more pale than he’d ever seen him, even including that time he’d nearly bled out in Yugoslavia, barely two feet away. “You probably shouldn’t be out of bed,” Clint said.

Coulson dropped his shoulders. One hand sneaked up to touch his chest, fingertips pressing lightly on his sternum. “Probably,” he agreed. “Although it certainly doesn’t feel like I’ve been out for…” he frowned. “Honestly? I’m not sure how long I’ve been under, Clint.”

“Weeks,” Clint blurted, and had to look away as Coulson’s eyebrows lifted nearly to his hairline. Which was saying something. The man was definitely a carrier for male pattern baldness, not that Clint had ever minded. And Coulson used that persona, used that look to further his paper-pusher facade, not that a constant cover wasn’t the sexiest thing ever or anything, and for the first time Clint was aware of just how angry he was. “You were in a coma, Coulson. It’s not like you were taking a really long nap.” Or had nearly died or anything.

Whether or not Coulson heard the unuttered words, he didn’t say anything. Instead, he sagged onto the bed, fingers still massaging the flesh on his chest as if he could pick up braille from it. “Weeks.” He kept his gaze solidly on Clint. “The last thing I remember—” he frowned. “I vaguely remember Fury. I remember thinking I was about to die.”

“You remember telling him that all your superheroes needed was something to avenge?” Clint demanded. A little spark of ire threatened to overtake the guilt churning away in Clint’s gut. “Do you remember sacrificing yourself to the bigger threat?”

Coulson’s gaze narrowed. “I remember going toward the detention area. I also remember hearing that you were on your way there.”

“I never made it.” Thank all the gods for that. Loki would have pitted them against each other. Clint would have watched his own hands kill Coulson. Or the last thing he’d remember would be Coulson ending his life. One or the other.

Clint really didn’t like those odds. He lost either way. “Nat stopped me. Cognitive recalibration.”

Coulson didn’t bother to ask what that meant. He probably could deduce it, knowing Nat the way they did. “Sounds like our girl.” He braced his hands against the edge of the bed, on opposite sides of his knees. “Weeks,” he murmured. As if he’d misplaced it. Coulson, who knew the location of everything, who organized their junk drawer, who alphabetized Clint’s breakfast cereal and snacks.

Clint reached out, brushed his fingers through the too-long strands of Coulson’s hair, felt Coulson lean into his touch. He wanted to say something, just didn’t know if it was words of comfort or a condemnation.

He never had a chance to find out. There was a knock at the door, brief and business-like, and a nurse stepped inside, a wheelchair pushed in front of her. “We’re ready for you downstairs, Agent Coulson.

~~~

“A month,” Coulson murmured. They were back in Coulson’s room after having been run all over the medical wing for tests and procedures, looking over what seemed to be healthy, normal readings of an x-ray. Clint hovered in the door, pushing down mixed feelings of relief-tinged anger and angst- riddled exhaustion. On the one hand, it was good to see Coulson awake. Clint kept sneaking glances at him, kept looking at him the way he’d managed to avoid looking at Coulson’s comatose body. It was almost unbelievable.

The doctor nodded. “Four weeks, plus two days—”

“Three hours, twelve minutes and twenty-four seconds,” Clint interrupted, cheer practically injected into each word. It was worth it to see the irritation flash across the doctor’s face, as well as the resignation broadcasting itself in the set of Coulson’s shoulders. After so many years of working ops together, of having to know undercover what he was thinking, this was practically charades. “You know, if you’re wanting to be exact about it.”

“Yes, thank you.” Coulson kept his attention squarely on the doctor. “So what changed?”

The doctor shrugged, looking incredibly uncomfortable. “Honestly? No idea. We knew you were healing physically at a quick rate, and scans of your body showed that you weren’t in the same type of coma that most patients are, but we can’t say why. We’re still running tests, and doing blood work and everything else we can think of.

Coulson nodded in response, his eyes glued to the x-ray. There was a place on his sternum where the bone had knit itself back together, looking like an ancient scar rather than a recent attack. “Then I can be discharged soon?”

The doctor frowned. “There are still tests I’d like to run, Agent Coulson. We aren’t sure exactly what happened, and honestly I’d like to call in some experts in other fields to see if there’s something else at work here.”

“Something else,” Clint repeated. Coulson leaned back against his pillows and shut his eyes a moment. “You mean if this is magical.” Which was a no-brainer, if you asked him. Man had a piece of metal shoved through his sternum. Man was dead. Man was comatose. Man looked like he’d had a negative encounter with a butter knife.

Yeah, let’s just go with magic. Clint rubbed his head. The hangover had eased up, but everything still felt too sharp, lights were to bright.

Words too painful

The doctor sighed. “Son, a month ago I’d have counted that out as impossible. Now I’m staring at a coma patient with a healing rate on par with the Norse god running around a few floors up. I don’t know anything about magic.”

“So you don’t know how dangerous I am,” Coulson summarized.

Clint snorted. “You’re a government spook disguised as an accountant, Coulson. You’ve always been dangerous. Now you’re just dangerous with a faster recharge rate.”

Coulson smiled wanly. “I’m not battery powered, Barton.”

The doctor sighed. “Gentlemen?” he waited until Clint had resettled back against the door jam sullenly while Coulson shifted his attention back away from Clint. “I’ll continue running tests. In the meanwhile, we can go ahead and start your physical therapy. While you’ve healed considerably faster than you should of, your body is still weak, and you’ve lost some muscle mass.” He flipped the pages of the clipboard back to its top page and placed it back on the end of the bed. “I’ll schedule your appointment tomorrow. In the mean time, get some more rest. I’d like to keep you here for a bit longer for observation, but I’m sure you can go home soon.”

Coulson nodded, and shifted forward on the cot. “Thank you,” he said quietly, then held his hand out to shake.

The doctor smiled and took his had. “We’ll see you soon, Agent.” He headed out the door, pausing only long enough to pat Clint on the shoulder before he walked out. Clint managed a brief nod, and pushed the door shut after him.

Coulson stared at the charts, flipping through the pages on his own medical background. Clint pushed himself off the door and came to the side of the bed, dropping heavily beside Coulson. “And here I thought you being efficient was a good thing,” he tried to joke. It felt foreign, jerky compared to the normal give and take of their banter. He leaned forward and rested his elbows against his knees, staring at the white wall opposite the bed.

Coulson made a soft noise in the back of his throat and dropped the charts against his lap. “Efficiency as defined by normal human parameters? That I can accept. This, this is something else, Clint.” He was quiet, matter-of-fact about the whole thing, but under it all, Clint could hear the soft tones of worry and stress.

Something that Coulson was so good at managing. “Still not seeing how you getting better is a bad thing, Coulson.” Clint rubbed his hands together. “It’s probably something in the water from some old SHIELD project, or maybe a new medical regiment that the doctor’s not telling us about. Some old mission with some old baddie that suddenly went awry, or maybe it’s one of those freak accidents. You know, like when stage four cancer is suddenly healed for no reason.”

“Or maybe it’s the after affect of Loki’s scepter,” Coulson pointed out quietly.

Which was something Clint didn’t want to think about. Loki had been… so much. For those few days, he’d been everything in a way that now terrified Clint. It had never been a problem to not be enough, because he’d known exactly what Loki had wanted, when he wanted it. He’d been exactly what was necessary. That sort of Stepford security was a bit like a drug— heady, desirous, and still, even after detox, something that a small part of Clint still wanted.

 _Pathetic_.

He shook his head. “So what if it is,” he said, as much to himself as to Coulson. “It doesn’t have to mean anything.”

“It could mean a lot of things, Clint,” Coulson argued. He pushed to his feet, stalked toward the door, then turned around to face Clint. “It could be a link to him.” He frowned. “What did happen to Loki?”

Clint shrugged. “Thor took him back to Asgard. He now assures us that Loki has been dealt with.” Clint had never asked for details on that. Without seeing a body, without putting Loki on the ground himself, he knew he could never trust that the Trickster god had been truly taken care of. It was too little, way too late, and, no matter how torn up Thor had seemed over the incident, nothing would ever change that. Clint had been happy to know that they’d probably never see Loki again. He’d also been grateful to slip out of the room as soon as Thor had told him.

Even though they’d fought together, even though Thor had protected the Earth from his brother, had bled over its asphalt with the rest of the Avengers, Thor was still linked to Loki in a way that could never be severed.

Clint wondered if they had that in common.

Coulson shook his head. “We don’t know all of what Loki is capable of. Thor doesn’t either— after the incident in New Mexico, Loki went who knows where and learned things that the rest of us can only imagine. We don’t know anything about that scepter, either.” He rubbed at his sternum again, and a small bit of Clint wanted to scold him for it. “For all we know, this is a way for him to get back into our world.”

“The same could be said about me,” Clint said evenly. After all, it was nothing more than he’d been thinking ever since the spell had worn off. And the fact that he’d said it to the wall beside Coulson’s bed meant nothing.

A warm hand touched his head, fingers cascading gently through his hair. Clint closed his eyes and leaned forward gently, forehead coming into contact with Coulson’s arm. “If you shook it in the battle— if he was never able to get back inside— then I imagine you’re safe,” Coulson said quietly. He rubbed gently, almost petting Clint’s scalp. “But we’ll need to figure out what this is,” he continued, voice brisk. “We’ll need to contact Fury—”

“No,” Clint sat upright, and finally looked up at Coulson. From this angle it looked like he’d been on his feet for hours, was tired and exhausted. “We can’t tell them yet.”

Coulson sighed. “He’s going to find out that I’m awake, Clint. The doctor probably told him hours ago.”

Clint shook his head. “No, none of these guys work for SHIELD. Stark was… really, almost uncomfortably thorough about background checks.” A small smile fought its way onto his face. “Apparently, he doesn’t trust SHIELD, nor does he want them in A Tower.”

Coulson frowned. “A Tower,” he repeated.

Clint waved that aside. “Stark’s tower. Where a bunch of us live now. Not really important at the moment.” He chewed on his lip a moment. “Coulson, we can’t tell Fury.” They both knew exactly what the Director would do. He’d whisk Coulson off to some SHIELD laboratory, would run all sorts of tests on him, would possibly take him out of the field. Maybe even lock him up, treat him like Blonsky.

Coulson frowned. “Clint, he’s going to figure it out. I’m not staying in here for the rest of my life, and if this is actually part of Stark’s property, then he already knows. And honestly, I don’t think he’s the type to keep this sort of thing quiet.”

Clint smiled. “He was pretty pissed about the whole ‘Coulson’s down, doctor’s called it’ thing. I don’t think he’d be willing to tell Fury what time noon is, much less what you’re up to.”

“But he’ll tell the other Avengers,” Coulson pointed out. “Eventually, the news will get back to SHIELD.” Warm fingers slid through Clint’s hair again. “We may as well be the ones who put it there.”

Clint reached up and grabbed Coulson’s hand, pulled it away. “Not yet. Let’s see if we can’t figure it out first, or if maybe it goes away.” He stood, putting himself directly into Coulson’s personal space. “Banner’s pretty good with all sorts of weird science, and Thor’s also from Asgard. And Stark…” Clint had to fight a grin at the almost aghast expression vying for space in Coulson’s gaze. “Well, Stark’s pretty useful in a lab. With weird stuff. And I bet Cap would keep him from going too far into Crazy Town with it all.”

When in doubt, go with the Captain America play. Do not collect $200 dollars, do not go home.

Coulson sighed again. “Fine, Barton. We’ll give it a week.” He sat down on the side of the bed, so heavily he may as well have collapsed. “One week. Then we talk with Fury.” His mouth quirked up humorlessly. “If he hasn’t figured it out by then.”

Clint was willing to bet he wouldn’t. At least not from an actual, living source. “I think we’re covered there.” He edged toward the door. “I’ll mention something to the others. Make sure that everyone’s on the same page. Maybe even make them sign up for conferences or something, so they don’t all come rushing in to see you.”

Coulson smiled wryly. “I’m willing to bet that none of them are itching to see me.”

“Nat’s interested in seeing your body in a non-prone, dead-like position,” Clint argued. “Which, for her, is pretty progressive. It must mean something.”

“I’m sure it does,” Coulson agreed. He leaned back against the head rest and closed his eyes for a moment.

“Grab a nap, Coulson.” Clint’s hand hovered over the doorknob. “You look like shit.”

“You know how to woo a man, Barton,” Coulson returned, though his eyes stayed stubbornly shut. “Go and plot things.”

“Aye, aye.” He pulled the door open, then hesitated. “I’m on the same team as them, you know.” He glanced over his shoulder at Coulson’s gray face. “An Avenger.” He wasn’t sure what response he was going to get out of that, if it’s be surprise that Clint was capable, pride that he’d managed to work on a team for so long. Happiness that he’d managed without Coulson.

Instead, Coulson’s eyes creaked open, and he stared up at Clint as if expecting more. “Of course you are.” As if Clint had pointed out that he liked to use bows as his primary weapon, or he’d nearly burned down the kitchen while trying to put a frozen pizza in the oven.

In his defense, that had only happened once. “Okay. Just making sure you knew, or something.” Clint ducked out of the room before Coulson could say anything else, and hurried down the still busy hall to the elevator. “Because that was smooth,” he muttered. _Pathetic_.

You’ve already said that, he told himself, and smashed the button to call the elevator.

~~~

The metal doors slid shut behind him, and Clint realized for the first time just how grimy he was, still covered in dust and debris from the night before. His head still throbbed dully, and he let out a quiet groan, and let his head fall back against the wall behind him.

Two floors later the elevator thudded to a stop. The shiny doors opened to reveal Thor. He was dressed in normal, everyday human clothes, the hammer pinned away on his belt, making him look more like a mountain man or a lumberjack than the God of Thunder. Clint watched him warily from slitted eyes as Thor paused to acknowledge his presence, then stepped lightly into the elevator beside him. He frowned at the buttons for a few seconds before pressing the one that would take him to the roof.

“I had not thought to see you for the rest of the day,” he announced. The words ricocheted around Clint’s head, crashing painfully around his eardrums. “You did not look to be in a sprightly mood this afternoon.”

Had it really only been a few hours? It felt like it had been days, watching doctors run test after test, draw vial after vial of blood, scan, sound, poke and prod Coulson. In the end, nothing had been discovered. No one knew why he was awake. But more importantly, no one knew why he was healing as quickly as he was. “Things came up,” he said simply. Somehow, it wasn’t his story to tell. Besides, how did one announce that someone had come out of a coma? Simply say, hey, you know that sleeping guy? Looks like he finally woke up. Who would have thought we’d need an alarm clock? Only thing the doctors never tested.

Perhaps he’d use that when he spoke to Nat. She’d probably appreciate knowing that Coulson was up and about. Of course, she’d hurt him for waiting so long to tell her, but for Nat, that was practically a hug. God, he loved that woman.

Clint’s gaze flickered to check what floor they were currently on, then caught sight of Thor’s face reflected in the glass doors. The big guy was gazing at Clint’s hands, a frown creasing his usually bright expression. “Someone steal your Wheaties this morning?” he asked, tone going for light. It landed somewhere closer to vaguely embarrassed, but as that was nowhere near hostile, he considered it a win.

Thor frowned an shook his head. “Forgive me if I ask something inappropriate, but you’re without that little mechanical square you usually carry. The doctor Banner says that it records the health of the Son of Coul.” Which was a better explanation that it could have been— he’d heard Stark mention something about a security blanket before Nat had shoved an elbow into where the man’s kidney should live (after last night, Clint suspected he’d had it removed years ago), and Steve kept trying to call it a chisel (though to be fair, Clint suspected he did it mainly to annoy Stark). Thor hesitated as if trying to decide what to say, then continued. “Has something occurred?”

Clint stared at his own reflection for a long moment, nodded abruptly. A darkness he’d never noticed lifted from Thor’s face. Which was saying something. The big man usually looked like nothing was ever wrong, like he’d done the universe some horrible tragedy when the light turned red at rush hour. “This is excellent news!” Thor clapped him on the shoulder, twice in quick secession, and Clint winced.

For a moment, Thor merely beamed down at him. Then, the bright expression slid away from his face, replaced by an abject weariness that seemed almost alien on his face. “Surely you are excited that the Son of Coul is no longer ailing away?”

Clint sighed. “Excited is one word.” The door to his level slid open with a quiet ping. He still had to contact Natasha, had to explain that hey, Coulson was awake, had been for hours, and no, he hadn’t said anything. It was going to be a fun conversation.

It was probably going to be a lot like Budapest.

Thor planted his hand against the door of the elevator as Clint stepped off, keeping it open. “I know that, given the circumstance, that this will sound petty, but I am truly grateful that the Son of Coul has been revived. He is a good man, a good warrior, and even though Loki hurt so many…” Clint jerked, and Thor sighed. “I know he has done a great deal of harm to this world. It’s just good to know that, perhaps, he didn’t do it as thoroughly as we had originally thought.”

No, Clint thought as Thor pulled his hand back into his side. No, he did exactly the amount of damage we thought he had. We just can’t see it all.

~~~

Silently, without really looking at one another or saying anything, Clint and Natasha gathered the rest of the Avengers late at night in the kitchen. Mostly, they come quietly, slipping into the kitchen as if they realized that this was a discussion not meant for any ears but their own. Tony came as he always did, hands shoved deep into his jeans, stepping with a swagger that suggested he had been the one to call them together. Thor entered happily and loudly.

Which was to say as per usual as well.

Tony cleared his throat and leaned his hip against the counter top, eyes focused on a point somewhere above their heads. “So. Awake and apparently well. And that's...good, right? I mean, that's what we're all hoping for?”

Clint nodded, wondered how much JARVIS knew from monitoring the medical ward. “Of course it’s good-”

“Then why are we all here?” Tony cut in, hands still shoved stiffly into his pocket. “I mean, I know you agents are used to dealing with subterfuge on a daily basis, but speaking in code and using our thighs as murder weapons are not part of every one else’s normal evenings.”

Someday, Clint was going to actually kill someone with his thighs. At the moment, Stark was high on the list of people to try it out on. “I want you to keep Coulson’s recovery from SHIELD.”

Bruce frowned. “Don’t you think they’ll notice. I mean, the man’s not in a coma anymore.” He fiddled with the partially tucked in hem of his oversized shirt. “And aren’t the two of you still employed by SHIELD?”

“Not to mention, I mean, I know Coulson looked like he did the taxes or something," Stark pulled out the last free chair in the kitchen and collapsed heavily on top of it.  "but I think Fury’ll probably notice that he’s out in the field again, tasing innocent billionaires for slight misunderstandings.”

Clint ignored that. “Eventually, we’ll let them know. On our own terms” he hesitated, uncertain how to proceed exactly. “The doctor says he’s healing rapidly.” He tried to look for a better lead in.

Apparently, that was enough. Steve sat up, forearms braced against the kitchen table. Evidently, good, Brooklyn boys didn’t put their elbows on the tabletop. Coulson would swoon all over again. “How rapidly is that?”

Clint crossed his arms in front of his chest and went for broke. “Too rapidly. He doesn’t show any signs of anything. The scar from the scepter looks like a scratch. Everything is reading as normal. The only difference is how tired he still is, and all things considered, that’s less of a symptom and more of something to be expected.”

Bruce shifted his weight, hands hugging his elbows. “What are the doctors saying?”

“Nothing. They’re all standing around staring at walls and talking about magic. The doctor is less than useless in this situation, Bruce.” Clint glanced around. “But that’s not the problem. The problem is keeping SHIELD in the dark about it.”

Natasha nodded. Stark frowned, and leaned his chair back. “Wait. Two agents are discussing keeping their employers in the dark. I’m confused— is this cliche, or is it just weird?”

Steve pushed Stark’s chair back down. It hit the tiled floor with a quiet thud. “You think that Fury will experiment on Coulson?” He asked, ignoring Stark’s indignant look.

“I think he’ll want to put it in a bottle and use it.” Clint said honestly. Nat swung her foot slowly. It brushed against Clint’s knee on each pass. “I think Coulson would be happy to let him. I think that’s a bad idea.”

Bruce frowned down at the floor. Thor tapped on the table thoughtfully. “Is this truly what the Son of Coul wants?”

No, the Son of Coul wanted to offer himself up on a silver platter. Clint sighed. “I’m not sure. I know that he would want to help SHIELD out however he could. He wants to know what’s going on.” He hesitated, then said quietly. “I don’t think we should find out.”

For a moment, there was only the whisper of Nat’s foot against Clint’s knee. Then Tony stood from his chair. “You want us to not run the tests to find out what’s going on?” he asked, as if Clint were a slow child who thought Santa killed small children for gas money.

What Clint wanted was for there to be no reason to run the damn tests. But the head in the sand method? He’d take that one, too. “I don’t think there are any tests that will tell us what's going on. I think that Loki,” he ignored Thor’s wince, “wouldn’t show up on a computer screen. And the less known, the less SHIELD knows. And the less they can use any of that against him.”

Tony glanced at Natasha. “You agree with all this? You actually want to keep SHIELD from knowing about a potential threat? And, more importantly, you want to keep us from figuring it out?”

Nat looked at him evenly, eyebrows just slightly raised and face impassive. They hadn’t actually discussed this beforehand, Clint hadn’t even run the idea of keeping SHIELD in the dark by her. And she could go either way on it, could fall back into trusting an organization that had given her purpose or side with the man who had given her new life.

“Yes,” she said simply. Tony threw up his hands.

“Biggest scientific discovery since any of the rest of us. He could be transformed somehow. Maybe a new version of Cap or something.” And that would be rich— Coulson would probably actually swoon at hearing that comparison. From the twitch of Nat’s lips, Clint could see that she was thinking about it also. “It could spawn all sorts of new discoveries. For all we know, this could cure cancer.”

Nat rolled her eyes. Stark glared around the room. “Seriously. We’re going to sit on this? No one wants to help the guy out?”

Clint shook his head. “That’s not what this is about.”

“Then what? Making sure that the wrong hands are kept out of important technological ideas? There are bigger threats here than someone like me, for example.” He pointed toward the medical wing. “Has anyone thought about a link to Loki, for example?”

Clint felt his face harden. “Coulson isn’t a threat.”

“He’s right under the angry bees with Cap right now, Clint.”

“SHIELD monitors and polices potential threats. We’re all on that list.” Natasha said quietly, before Clint could respond to that. “We’re all capable of doing things that ordinary people aren’t. We’ve all gone through a certain way of living, a certain way of viewing ourselves, and we know that, at the end of the day, we’re not entirely human.”

Bruce took a deep breath and folded his hands in his lap. Cap leaned back in his chair and breathed out slowly, turning to face out the window rather than look at his team mates. Clint kept his gaze steadily on Stark’s face. Natasha continued. “But Coulson’s human. He’s totally human, with all of its frailty and mortality.”

Clint leaned forward. “The others respect and trust him. They know him as Agent Phil Coulson of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division. Seriously, there have been petitions to legally change his name to this. And he would let it happen. But if they know he’s not just Phil Coulson anymore, if they think he’s some sort of magically enhanced alien, then he’s in the same boat as us. An outsider.” Clint didn’t know how that would go over, if SHIELD and agent were split. He couldn’t tell if there would be some sort of personality crisis, or if Coulson would shake it off and decide he just wanted to be Phil from now on. And if he’s really lucky, they’d even think he’s as far down the freak list as Clint himself.

_You brought the monster._

Clint shook his head sharply, then glared around the room. “No one does anything about this. Not right now.”

For a moment, no one responded. Then, Steve turned from regarding the outside world and nodded once. “If Coulson wants us to help, he’ll come ask us himself. Until then, we stay out of it.”

Thor nodded in agreement. Bruce lifted his gaze from the floor. “I think…I think this is a dangerous bag of worms either way. But actually knowing there’s something alien under your skin, or in your head… sometimes it’s worth it, Clint.” He rubbed his hands together. “Other times, maybe not. But I’m with Cap on this.”

Good enough. Clint managed a brief smile, then turned toward Stark, who threw his hands up in what could be defined as either defeat or an aborted attempt to do the wave. “Fine. For now.”

Clint breathed out slowly. He hadn’t thought he’d get any of them to actually agree to it. Honestly, he was still worried Thor would go announcing that his brother hadn’t actually killed everyone from rooftops. So it came as a bit of a shock when a quiet, mild voice interrupted his inner victory dance. “Thank you, everyone. But I’d rather you ran the tests anyway.”

Clint’s head shot up. Coulson stood in the door of the kitchen, wearing a robe over a pair of sweats and an old t-shirt that he’d pulled from Clint’s side of the dresser. Apparently, someone had told him about their living conditions. “Coulson—”

He held up a hand. “I appreciate the sentiment. I really do. But I’m not going to sweep this under the rug. We need to know this information.” He glanced around. “So find it out. Now, please.”

Bruce let out a slow breath of air, and stood up. “The other guy’s pleased to see you upright again,” He said quietly, and Coulson jerked slightly. Bruce nodded, offered a small smile, and slipped out the door.

Clint gritted his teeth. “It’s less about sweeping, and more about not being used,” he started, and Coulson shook his head.

“If it’s something major, then we need to know, Clint,” he said quietly.

Clint cursed under his breath and looked away, glaring out the outside window. Nat’s foot brushed his leg one last time, then she slipped from her spot on the counter. With a jerk of her chin, she headed for the door, pausing only long enough to give Coulson a glance over, and grip his elbow momentarily.

Thor grasped Coulson’s hand tightly for a moment, happiness practically beaming from every pore. “It is good to see you upright, my friend!”

Cap smiled as well, a bit more uncomfortably, glancing from Clint to Coulson. “I’m glad you’re feeling better, Coulson. You look much better already.”

Coulson nodded, a small smile creeping at his mouth as the two of them slipped from the room. Tony propped his feet up on the kitchen table and clasped both hands behind his head. “Phil. How’re the bed sores?”

The smile moderated itself into a much more polite version of itself. “Did you know that a taser can fit inside a robe pocket, Mr. Stark?” he asked pleasantly.

Stark held his hands up, and rose from the table. “If you wanted a moment alone, you just had to ask,” he said as he headed toward the door. Coulson rolled his eyes and shut the door firmly behind Stark as he turned to say one last thing.

They both ignored the mutter from the other side of the wood that JARVIS could open the door anytime he chose. Clint turned back from looking out the window. “I don’t regret asking,” he said quietly. Coulson nodded once, as if he’d been expecting that. “Loki doesn’t get to have you. No matter what.” No matter how angry Clint was at him.

Coulson came to lean against the cabinets beside Clint. For a moment, they both stared at the city scape out the window, watched the lights across New York buzz and glow against the dark sky. “You don’t belong to him,” Coulson said finally. Clint jerked once.

“I never said I did.” He hadn’t. And he certainly hadn’t ever mentioned hearing that snide voice, listening to the things he’d said, remembering the glow of appraisal and the security of truth. “For what it’s worth, neither do you.”

“That we know of,” Coulson said. “We don’t know what happened. I’d like to find out.”

Clint turned to face him. “And what happens if it’s something we aren’t expecting?”

Coulson grasped Clint’s face in his hands for a moment, then leaned in to kiss him. It was solid and sweet, and tasted exactly the way it had four weeks, two days, and a hell of a lot more hours ago. Which meant that Coulson had brushed his teeth in their apartment as well as found clothes. “I have no idea,” Coulson said after they parted. “But I think we can cross that bridge when we come to it.”

~~~

Naturally, they didn’t get a chance to find out for quite a while. Considering the city was attacked seven hours later, by what Clint can only assume are giant bees of some kind.

“Wasps, actually. Giant flying wasps,” Stark reported, sounding way too cheerful about it. “Robotic, flying wasps. Badly constructed, ancient technology, but still flying. Can I hear it for the robotics division here? Honestly, with mythical guns that apparently don’t exist,” He twisted around, avoiding a set of stingers by inches, “invading aliens,” a gut-clenching drop and for a moment Clint was free-falling between two smaller, shiny creatures, “and apparently magical beings trying to invade earth,” Stark caught him and whipped him up to crest above the wasps, “I think we should at least give a round of applause for good old-fashioned bots.”

“Is this your way of saying that both your giant arms on wheels are big fans of these guys?” Clint asked as they rose higher. “Are you taking the scenic route? It’s a straight line, Stark, the building is right there. Can’t JARVIS find it? It’s literally less than a hundred feet away.” His feet skimmed the top of another building, littered with air conditioning units and generator covers. It would be as good a place as any, if he needed to suddenly abandon ship on his first  choice of perch.

“You know he can hear you, right? He’s in the suit, he can operate the fingers.”

“Fan-fucking-tastic.” Now he had to deal with a potentially homicidal AI. Because his life wasn’t enough like a video game. Clint scanned the ground as Stark did a probably needless loop-de-loop. Steve and Nat were circling around each other, alternating between targets. Thor was flying around above their heads, smashing wasps down toward the earth like flies.

The Other Guy looked like he was trying to catch butterflies. Clint hoped it was the angle of his view, although he’d never seen a child try to jump and smash something quite so gleefully.

“Hawkeye,” Sitwell’s voice came over the comm. “Talk to me.” Clint twisted around and could just make out Sitwell, suit and all, standing calmly at the end of the street. There were junior agents swarming around behind him, and even at the distance Clint could make out the varying degrees of panic. Clint smiled. Junior agents. Coulson was alway fun around junior agents.

Which was a moot point, as Coulson was currently still under house arrest in the medical ward. Apparently, doctors get irritated when coma patients just wander off, even if it is just down a few levels to their own quarters. When Sitwell had shown up barely an hour earlier, irritation practically oozing out of him because, with SHIELD in current disarray, there were so few agents to call upon to deal with a few hives-hives worth of mechanical insects, the doctors had been in the middle of a lecture that could rival Coulson's at his most exasperated.

It was no wonder, therefore, that Coulson had wanted to leap at the chance to get back out on the job, the one-week deal be damned.  Sitwell had had to promise an ear piece to get him to stay (and if that hadn’t been the most poignantly socially awkward reunion ever. Level seven agents apparently never covered people coming back from the dead in their paperwork).

It was also hazardous to their earlier agreement. Clint wasn't even going to bother trying to convince Sitwell to keep mum about Coulson's recovery. Which meant Fury would know before the day was out. If he didn't already.

Peachy.

“It’s a balmy seventy-two degrees in lovely Manhattan, with winds at a crisp seventeen-hundred miles-an-hour,” Clint said, forcing the same overly cheerful tone into his voice that had always creeped him out on plane rides. “Cloud-coverage at a brisk roast-your-fucking-skin. We’re currently cruising at an altitude of way-too-fucking-high, and most likely your pilot is already drunk.” Stark dropped him again, and Clint prided himself on not shrieking like a small child until he was caught. He also managed to take out one of the wasps buzzing around beyond Stark’s metal clad shoulder. “Seriously, Stark, it’s right the fuck there.”

“Temper temper, Bird-man.” He was caught up, twirled around, and dropped gracelessly on the top of the building. “If possibly, try and take down a few of them as undamaged as possible. It’ll be a nice puzzle to save for a rainy day. You know, if crosswords and sudoku suddenly disappear. And for the record, it’s seventy-seven degrees and we’re only about three hundred feet up.” And with an overly dramatic flare of his repulsors, Iron Man soared off to patrol the perimeter.

Roger that. “Stark says to make sure no parts survive. Hulk, turn them all into dust.”

“Can we focus here, please?” Steve sent his shield through the wings of a particularly large wasp trying to pick up a newspaper stand.

“I am focused. I am one-hundred percent fo— okay, one of them just flew by carrying a pay phone. Where the hell did he get a pay phone? I thought those things were obsolete.” The panels on Stark’s shoulder opened up and several small red darts flew out, connecting with several wasps whom had apparently taken offense to the sky being use by someone else and were converging on Iron Man’s location.

“Iron Man, keep them from leaving this alley. Hawkeye, what can you see up there?” Steve’s voice was tight. Clint leaned over the edge of the roof and picked off a wasp that was dive-bombing Nat, keeping Cap securely in his sights. The wasps weren’t too focused on him and Nat; they seemed to be more angry about Thor and Tony.

“Nothing worth writing home about, Cap. Bunch of wasps, bunch of crazily dressed guys playing with said wasps, and some junior agents are freaking out at the end of the alley.” He shot down two wasps as they tried to fly over the tops of the buildings. One exploded on contact. The other melted. “Stark, did you alter my quiver?”

“You’re welcome.” Iron Man flew to where Thor was currenly electrocuting half a dozen wasps out of the air, shot a few of the creatures off the surrounding walls and nearly took a backswing to the ribs for his trouble. “My space is getting way too crowded.”

Clint gritted his teeth and picked off a wasp that was just behind Stark’s head. The fact that he practically grazed Tony’s helmet was neither here nor there. “Don’t mess with the quiver, Stark. It’s set up the way I like it.”

“You’ll like this one better,” Tony shot back, and took out a wasp flying between them. The small explosion hid him from sight momentarily. When the smoke cleared, Iron Man was far above the top of the roofs, taking pot shots from afar.

“Save it for later,” Cap ordered. “Hawkeye, give us a reading. Do we need to send in the agents to cover the ends of the streets, or is it safer to keep them out of our way still? And can you see the guy in charge?”

“I liked my quiver the way it was, Stark,” Clint muttered, and scanned the edges of the alley. A few blocks up, a large white van with red numbers painted on the side rolled to a stop. “Looks like we have company, Cap. News crew at three hundred.”

Nat swore softly in Russian, then electrocuted a wasp that came to close. Steve thwacked the thing out of the air. “Alright, Agent Sitwell? Can you send someone to deal with those guys? They’ll just get in the way.”

“It’s already being taken care of,” Sitwell said, and sure enough, several agents broke off from their milling about and hurried up toward the van as a man with a giant camera and a rather attractive woman hopped out.

Stark whistled. “She would be worth giving an interview to,” he said. “Scanning the area— it looks like the guy in charge is— surprise— nowhere around.”

Thor braced himself momentarily on a building ledge and crushed two wasps with a single swing. “That is troubling news. If the commander is not near his forces, then how do we end this attack?” It was a valid question. Wasps were still coming out of the woodworks— each of the buildings seemed to open up into some new hive, and Clint was only happy that they’d picked a closed in area to attack.

Whatever they were after, it was at least in a strategically sound location.

“We do what any logical tactician would do,” Stark announced. “We tell JARVIS to scan the area, and brilling! Electromagnetic currents are all leading to one place.”  
The thrusters kicked in high ahead. “Let’s go see what this guy’s up to.”

“No,” Cap decapitated another wasp. “We don’t know what he has and we need to hold this location. Stay in the air, Iron Man.” For all the good that did. Stark didn’t even pause.

Stark snorted. “We can deactivate them all if we find him, Cap.”

“We need —”

“Cap, you guys have that, I have this. Hawkeye can cover the perimeter, I’ll take down the bad guy and save the day.” Another split second and the trail of light and fire disappeared beyond the building tops.

Steve made a strangled sound, and grappled a wasp down onto the ground. “Thor, back him up. If he finds trouble there, he’ll be outnumbered.”

Thor hesitated. “Would it not be more prudent to destroy the hives first, and secure this area?”

“Yes,” Cap was grasping one wasp by the feelers and using it as a weapon. “Yes, it would be more prudent, but we don’t have time for that anymore. Hawkeye, cover the skies. Widow, shoot as many of the bastards as possible. Hulk, take out the ones on the ground.”

“Yeah, that might be a problem,” Clint said. He could hear the faint note of hysterical laughter bubbling at the edges of his words, carefully hidden behind years of intricate ops that went belly-up at the worst possible moment. “Considering the Other Guy's wandered off.”

Steve let go of his wasp, and sent it through one of the walls of the building opposite to Clint. He stopped on the battlefield and looked up in Clint’s direction, as if he could see him through the distance and chaos between them. “Wandered off,” he repeated quietly.

Clint nodded. Up the street, at the edge of where even his vision began to get a bit hazy, he could just make out a large green figure, apparently transfixed by a couple of statues. “It’s safe to say he’s left the building.”

Steve looked like he wanted to start swearing. He also looked like he wanted to pulverize something. Unluckily for Clint (who had been waiting with baited breath for something more than a guilty sounding ‘hell,’ or ‘bastard’ to come out of his spangled mouth), he chose the latter. “Thor, get Stark,” he gritted out. “We’ve got this location. Provide support and get the leader and maybe next time we’ll all talk about sticking with the plan.”

“Thou of little faith,” Stark’s voice cut through the line. “I don’t need backup, Cap.”

“Which you should have thought of before you left the battlefield,” Cap said simply as Thor soared off, Mjolnir firmly in hand. “Sitwell, if you could move some agents to the north end of the alley, I think we can get this covered.”

“Better make it more east, Cap,” Clint said over Sitwell’s “affirmative.” The east had better places to hide and shoot from, while the north took them far too close to where the Hulk had decided to take a nap.

Steve frowned and hit another wasp. Nat shot over his shoulder to take out two more and a moment later he returned the favor by throwing his shield to ricochet off the buildings behind her. “It’s more dangerous to lose the north exit, Hawkeye.”

“It’s a hell of a lot more dangerous than the east, Cap.” Clint returned and shot down three wasps who had apparently decided the north exit was the place to be. “I’ve got it covered.”

Steve hesitated, looked like he wanted to argue, then apparently nodded. “Fine. Cover the north. Agents, move to the east, we have the middle.” He sighed. “Let’s finish this up, people.”

Naturally, it stopped being easy after that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is ridiculously hard to get these guys to talk. Seriously. I'm sorry for how long this update took. On the plus side, I have a good chunk of the last chapter written, so hopefully I'll have that up on Wednesday. 
> 
> This... also didn't quite come out as I'd hoped. I can't figure out why. I'll try and fix it if I find it, though. 
> 
> Thanks as always for reading. I really do appreciate it. Please feel free to leave a comment telling me that this chapter was kind of weak-- I'm hoping it makes up in quantity for what it lacks in quality. 
> 
> Chapter title inspired by Shawn Colvin's "Sonny Came Home." Unoriginal titles away!


	7. It All Depends on Which Way the Fulcrum Gives

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which wasps are fought, Jones is smacked, and our boys finally have the fight they've been waiting for.

Whatever it was that Stark was up to, it seriously pissed off the horde of swarming metal insects. Suddenly, the amount of wasps coming out of the buildings tripled. They swarmed up and out of the windows, going in all directions.  

“Stark!” Cap was barely visible amidst the mass of wings and chrome, his uniform a brightly colored kaleidoscope in the distance. “We’ve got movement here… report in on your end.”

“Yeah,” the sound of Iron Man’s repulsors echoed through the commlink, rapid and high-pitched. “Got it here too, Cap. Found the head honcho, he’s kinda doing the distracted ranting thing, and now we’re basically surrounded by a bunch of pissed off flying machines. So give us a minute or two, we’ll knock this guy--” there was a grunt and a crash, and Clint figured it was safe to say Stark was having a few more problems than the playboy philanthropist had originally figured he would.

Which would make the whole thing suck a whole lot less, if it weren’t for the fact that they were  currently having about twice as much trouble than preferred on a mission.  Clint rolled forward, barely missing the sting from three wasps as they began converging on his location. Hoping that Nat and Cap were fine on the ground, he twisted back, managed to take out two with one shot, then dodged to the left as another stinger came at his face.

Which would have been fine, except there were three more waiting to pounce on him (or whatever the flying equivalent of pouncing was). Clint batted one away with his bow, ducked under a second, and was sent sprawling by a third when he tried to stand upright to take out the ones that were bombing him. Two wasps converged on him instantly, stingers stabbing at the concrete as he skittered away.  Clint scrambled for the knife at his thigh, paused just long enough for the wasp to jab at the ground beside his him, then swung the blade straight into the place where the head met the thorax. The wasp fell forward onto his stomach, the wings twitching feebly as it tried to maintain power.

Above him, a dozen or more wasps were milling around in the air. A few were focused on him, others appeared to be scanning the area looking for targets. Either way, the roof was no longer a safe perch.

Another wasp flew at him. Clint tried to roll out of the way, and succeeded in being pummeled and  pinned by a large wasp, while he did his best to keep the stinger away from his stomach as he tried to remember how to breath. The tip vibrated, little blue speckles of electricity zapping at the air bare inches away from Clint’s solar plexus.

Yeah, fuck that. It was time to move on. “Gonna need a lift soon,” Clint gasped in a painful breath as he kicked the wasp away, and stabbed an arrow in through the top carapace. The wings fluttered once, then went still.  “It’s getting a bit busy up here.”

There was a momentary pause on the comms. “Yeah, that’s going to be a problem,” Stark said slowly, his voice unusually strained. “Since both of us are a bit preoccupied.”

Clint rolled away from the downed wasp, then dove forward again as a pair of stingers hit the ground where he had been just moments before.  “Kinda running out of rooftop here, Ironman.” He brought the bow up to block another wasp, then changed his mind and twisted it away to the side to try and avoid another three as they ambushed him from behind. Two just flew by, while the third slammed against the wasp that Clint had just held off.  “And there isn’t an elevator or anything just sitting around up here.”

“Find the fire escape,” Stark snapped back, then pinched off a yell.  There was a few moments where the  comm was filled with shallow breaths . “If Thor moves, then we get overrun. More importantly, they go out into the city.  And I have to genius my way to turning these things off.”

There was a grunt. “Mayhaps you could turn off these creatures, then gloat about your glory?” Thor’s voice was strained.

Fat chance of that happening. As if to confirm that, Stark laughed briefly, harshly, before his comm switched back off. Clint swore, long and creatively, then put three arrows into the wasps trying to corral him to the middle of the rooftop.

Down below, through the buzzing swarm of metal and LED, Clint could just make out both Nat's swift, circular movements as well as Cap's brightly highlighted, precise attacks. Neither were gaining any ground against the swarm; as soon as one insect went down, seven more were vying for the chancy to take its place. Forget Hydras; if you wanted a never-dead champion then whoever this current baddie was may have it the jackpot of maniacal schemes. Clint battered a wasp down and shot another with an electric arrow. The silver-blue static arced out to connect with three other wasps, bringing them down instantly. 

Well, that was pretty awesome. If they made it out of this in one piece, Clint would even consider telling Stark. Unfortunately the kill-one-see-seven aspect simply multiplied with bigger numbers, and Clint was rapidly running out of places to retreat to. He jumped back to dodge a stinger, scrambled up onto the ledge of the roof, and twisted in place as another wasp tried to take his head off his shoulders. Out of the corner of his eye, he could just make out Nat flipping up onto the back of one of the wasps, spinning it into another using e leverage created by her body weight, then being rammed in the side before her feet could make it back down to the earth. Cap whirled to help her, shield raised to be released in flight, and was stopped by two more wasps who had finally learned team spirit and had attached themselves to the shield, wings gong supersonic as they tried to rip it from his grasp.  

Clint lifted the bow, intending to try that electric arc attack once again. Unfortunately, the wasps not only were learning group tactics better than some major Fortune 500 groups, but they had also figured out gravity. Or maybe Clint was giving these robots way too much credit here, but either way, they chose to use the simplest method for derailing his attack: they shoved him off the side of the roof.

No matter how many times he had fallen from perches and vantage points throughout his life, there was always that brief, split second where everything seemed to white out and time just paused. Then the shock of it all would wear off, the adrenaline would kicked in, and Clint rapidly changed the output selection on his quiver, hoping that Stark hadn't decided to switch things around too much during his latest mad scientist joyride. 

Luck held with him, and he shot a grappling hook up to the edge of the roof, the end of it automatically attaching to the grip of his bow. Holding on with both hands, Clint took a deep breath and grimaced, waiting for the kick as the line went tight.

It didn't disappoint.  His arms nearly came out of their sockets when he wrenched to a stop, the breath driven out of him as he slammed hard into the side of the building with what Nat would latter claim was the shrillest yell she'd ever heard. Clint bounced once against of the sheer brick front, managed to find his feet, and took as deep a breath as he could, shoulder muscle s locked tight against his own weight. Seriously, this was just getting ridiculous.

"Hawkeye?" Cap’s strained voice finally made it through the blood pumping in his ears. "Hawkeye, report"

Report? Clint could have laughed. Sure, why not? "No longer 700 miles up, but it’s still a balmy, roast- your-skin sort of day, Cap." Apparently, the wasps hadn't forgotten about him. Clint pushed off the side of the building, swinging in midair to avoid one wasp, while looking for anywhere a bit more stable to perch. Just his luck, he thought, pulling a sidearm out from his boot and taking down four wasps that flew too close. The whole building was a sheer drop. There weren't even any windows or sills of any kind.  
Fabulous. They could survive aliens, space travel, third world dictators, and being frozen for decades, but apparently this guy managed to find the Avengers secret weakness: giant ass wasps. Clint landed back against the building, shot down another wasp, and began looking for an exit farther away. His grapple wouldn't take him close enough to the ground for a safe landing, and going up wasn't going to do any good either. He put a bullet through a multifaceted eye, and considered the building next door. The building with windows. 

Well, it was one way out. Clint began to back up, then run forward, using his weight like a pendulum to swing back and forth against the bricks until, after shooting wasps out of the way, Clint disconnected the wire form his bow and launched himself toward the opposite building, knees tucked up against his chest and arms pinwheeling madly. 

Luck (and physics and skill, thank you very much) were on his side. He crashed feet first through the window, and landed in an ungraceful rolling heap amidst shards of glass and splinters of wood.  Deja-vu, he thought wryly, grimacing at the sharp pull in his calf and the deep ache in his entire upper body. He was positive that there was a small shank of wood in his shin, and a ton of scrapes and bruises everywhere. There was no time to assess, he had to get up, had to move, had to move now. With that thought, he was up at the window, bow back up, empty sidearm forgotten on the floor behind him as he took three wasps out from behind Tasha and another two that were dive-bombing Cap. He only had a few minutes before they figured out where he had gone, and the more he took out in the meantime…

Suddenly, without any warning, the wasps just... stopped. They hung in the air for what felt like an endless moment, clear wings completely visible for the first time, then followed gravity's pull down, scattering out across the pavements below.  There was a long, still moment of silence, broken only by the explosions of metal against asphalt before Tony's voice came over the comms once again, "well, I hate to say I told you so..."

Clint held his position in the window for a moment longer, then let out a short bark of laughter, drowning out the rest of Stark's comment, as well as whatever Steve's terse response was. He slid down from the window to the floor, took a deep breath, and yanked the bit of wood out from his leg. Not too bad of an injury, he decided, listening to the bickering between Thor and Stark about who defeated whom, the irritable lecturing by Cap, the soft Russian swearing or the nearly melodic, unnaturally deep snores echoing through the comm. It would keep until he got home.

~~~

Of course, the puncture wound (which was really more like an elongated scrape, let’s not over-react here people) kept just until Clint’s feet touched to street below. By the time he’d gotten down there, two medics were sewing up a gash in Nat’s upper arm, while another was examining a wound on Cap’s stomach (though, considering the lack of actual blood and Roger’s healing factors, it was more likely that the medic was really just getting a great handful of Super Soldier abs). In the distance, Stark and Thor were being hesitantly approached as the two were currently inches apart, still arguing at high volume not only about who had taken whom down, but about unnecessary battle tactics and team mechanics. Clint could just see the irritation building in Roger’s shoulders, figured that was probably going to follow the same pattern that the Helicarrier footage had, and decided that getting in the way of two meta humans and a guy who shot lasers out of his palms was a bit more excitement than he was looking for right now.

Bruce was barely awake on other side of SHIELD’s science trucks. Clint could just make him out between the people running around, a purple blanked tucked around his shoulders.  He was practically blue with exhaustion, but luckily the Other Guy seemed to be gone, just leaving one run-down razzled- looking scientist.

Sitwell didn’t even look at Clint, just motioned a few more medics in his direction. Long years had prepared just about everyone to jump in with gauze and antibiotics, even before the smoke had officially cleared.

Clint didn’t even try to protest, just let the young doctor tug him onto a park bench and start poking around at his shin. They cut the fabric away and dove right in, antiseptics poured directly into the wound and he had to fight back a wince.

“No kids gloves, huh,” he muttered. The medic glanced up, surprised, but before she could say anything another voice drowned him out.

“She’s probably just testing for a human response.” Jones was directing two three junior officers, watching them as they skittered across the street and sidewalks gathering up every bit of technology that they could. He was holding a clipboard, scanning it almost absentmindedly. “A lot of people are still a bit on edge, you know.”

Clint pretended to consider for a moment. “You must be talking about my renowned reputation as one of SHIELD’s best agents. Unmatched sniping abilities, superb hand-to-hand abilities, pretty good looking on the eyes…”

“Unparalleled ability to remain not only alive but employed after betraying those closest to you…” Jones chimed in as if he were simply naming yet another item on his grocery list, eyes never leaving the paper in front of him. “How remarkable that those abilities don’t seem to be in as high demand much anymore.

It stung all the more that Jones might actually have a point. Black Widow had gone out several times since the events with Loki. Even Cap had helped SHIELD out, leaving A Tower before

Teeth grinding against themselves, Clint tried to keep his tone as light as before. “I don’t remember seeing you in the battle for New York. You remember—aliens, large amounts of property destruction… civilians running for their lives…” Blood and battle, the din of guns and technology so far advance that they were just clinging to the idea of carrying on…

“You really think you were the only one fighting that day. We were still getting orders. There was a back-up plan for when the lot of you fucked up.”

It hadn’t been until Stark had been on his suicide approach that Clint had learned about the nuke aimed straight for their location. It was pretty standard SHIELD procedure, to be honest—if you can’t win, at least contain the situation. If there isn’t a winning strategy, then make sure it doesn’t turn into a grand scale loss. Still, knowing how close they’d come be being disintegrated by their own people was a bit of a tender subject. That this asshole was the finger on the trigger made it even worse. “You were the one who fired the missile,”

Jones shrugged. “I followed orders. And while I’m glad I didn’t have to destroy an entire city, or lose some of the best assets we have,” his gaze flickered toward where Nat had finally gotten fed up with the medics and pushed her way between where Cap and Stark were currently standing toe-to-toe, Thor leaning standing obnoxiously close as well. “Still, if it would have saved the rest of the world, I’d take out any threat.” He turned back and looked hard at Clint. “By any means possible.”

Clint stood. He was easily a head above Jones without even trying. “I’m not a threat to SHIELD.” It even sounded pretty convincing.

Jones finally lowered the clipboard, and turned to face Clint square on. The height difference didn’t seem to bother him in the slightest, but considering Jones’ stature, it probably was something he was used to.  “Yeah, I’ll bet you said the same thing before the Tesseract became active. But I wonder how comfortable your new handler will be, working with you.” Considering what happened to the last one.

There were a lot of things Clint wouldn’t do, professionally speaking. Killing people, getting information, all of that was fine. He’d hurt people, he’d destroy buildings and ransack countries.  He’d never attacked another SHIELD employee (well, outside of practice spars and Tesseract brainwashing excluded).

But after the past few weeks (four weeks, three days now), a lot of things had changed.  And honestly, Clint had hit his limit for bullshit a hell of a long time ago. Before he could stop to reconsider the consequences, ignoring how it would look after the Helicarrier and Loki or anything else, Clint whirled on the ball of his foot and drove his fist into Jones’ temple

The feeling of skin splitting beneath his knuckles was possibly one of the most divine sensations that Clint could remember ever feeling. Jones reeled back, one arm wind-milling frantically for a second before the man’s training kicked in. Using the momentum granted to him, he whipped his foot around and caught Clint just behind the ankle. Pitching to the side, Clint barely caught himself early enough to throw his momentum forward to drive his heel into Jones’ stomach. Jones’ hands closed around his ankle even as Clint could feel the breath being driven out of him, and then the others were there, pulling the two of them apart like rowdy children who were throwing themselves at one another during recess. Large hands grasped Clint around the chest and practically lifted him off the ground as he was dragged backwards, while Cap placed a hand against Jones’ stomach and propelled him easily in the opposite direction.

Abject man-handling, even by someone like Cap, wasn’t something the rest of SHIELD took to. Behind Jones three men drew their sidearms, lifting the barrels toward Rogers. Clint could see Sitwell’s hand drop to his own holstered weapon, while a couple of other agents took a few hesitant steps toward the vans. Out of the corner of his eye Clint could see Ironman land a few feet away, all rocket-powered ego and bravado as he lifted one hand in Jones’ direction. It was a either a warning or Stark had some intent on providing cover. Clint couldn’t tell which, and Stark was strangely quiet over the comm.

However, between the lot of them, the fight (insomuch as it had been) was effectively ended. It didn’t keep either of them silent, however. Clint could hear Jones yelling threats at him, even as he was herded back toward the rest of the overly-tense SHIELD agents. “You should have finished the job on the Helicarrier, Barton.”

Clint pushed forward against Thor’s grip. It was like trying to budge steel, and he gave it up almost instantly. “Someday, I’m going to shoot you in the neck, Jones. Purely for the pleasure of listening to you whistle as you bleed dry.”

“One more on your current list of agents down?” Jones sneered, before stumbling back as Cap’s efforts to separate them became a bit more forceful. He tossed up his hands and wrenched himself away. “Lower your weapons,” he snapped at a few of the nearby junior agents, their guns still held waveringly on Cap. Without a glance back, he stomped off toward Sitwell, shouting instructions to anyone close enough to be ordered about.

Clint focused on breathing for a moment. His bow was still on his back, there were still a number of arrows in his quiver. It wouldn’t be hard to make the shot, to take Jones’ head clean off his shoulders, to vanish before anyone could lay their hands on him. He’d done it before, done it hundreds of times, in hundreds of crowded town squares and military courtyards. It’d take one shot.

“Clint.” Natasha’s voice carried over the din SHIELD was making with easy practice. She was leaning against Bruce’s side, and from the way that the scientist was tipping in her direction it was easy to see that the two of them were keeping the other upright. At some point a wasp had gotten close enough to rip a hole in the thigh of her suit, and she pressed one hand firmly against her leg. Bruce was practically dead on his feet, the way that he always was after he’d Hulked out, but his chin was almost parallel to the ground, gaze focused squarely on the scurrying agents beyond their little group.

And as much as Clint wanted to kill Jones, wanted him dead and bleeding and crumpled on the ground, he knew that there would be no coming back from the carnage that killing Jones would instigate. Because if this continued to escalate, then the Other Guy would show up again, bigger than lift and twice as green and nothing any of them could do would stop him from annihilating every agent in his path— a path that could easily extend to the rest of New York.

“I’m good,” he snapped. He pushed Thor’s hands from his shoulders and ignored Cap’s worried frown, then slung the bow across his shoulders and headed toward A Tower.

~~~

One of the best things about A Tower was the multi-level archery range. Clint had dabbled in it a few times while Coulson had been out and Nat had convinced him to at least try and stave off muscle atrophy, but he’d never really gotten a chance to put her through her paces. Now, he balanced carefully on a two inch beam that ran through the middle of the room, about twenty feet off the floor, crouched down and sighted down the arrow at the target on what had to be the other side of the tower. A momentary adjustment for the distance, a shift in muscles to brace himself and then the arrow was gone with a whisper.

The arrow shot across the range. The string reverberated loudly for a moment, the sound fading slowly into nothingness until, finally, the dull thud of the arrow piercing the target echoed back to Clint. He stood, and examined the shot, and nodded. “Let’s make this more difficult. Jarvis?”

“There are several different climate control options available in this part of the tower, Agent.” A holographic screen appeared instantly about a foot away from Clint. Weather information glistened in neon greens and blues, vibrant against dull background of the range. “Might I suggest something with wind or rain, perhaps?”

“Let’s stay away from the options where I end up looking like a drowned rat, Jarvis.” Clint reached out and touched one of the holographic buttons. “At least for now, anyway.” Another weather image popped up instantly, the text melting away to something entirely different. “But the wind sounds good. Give me something strong and unpredictable.”

“Of course, Agent.” There was a brief pause, then something kicked on, a generator or turbine or maybe Stark had just connected the entire building to the back of a Boeing 747 because an instant later Clint had dropped to a crouch in an effort to remain upright.  One hand reached out, fingers grazing the edge of the beam and just as Clint had acclimated to the strong gust it changed up on him, coming from his left instead.

He nearly flailed, compensated his weight, and was ready when the wind weakened abruptly, only to resurge once again. It was like being in the eye of a typhoon, not that Clint had a great deal of expertise in that area (it was only one time, and the amount of sheer-relief bitching he had to endure after the fact almost made it not worth the effort. Almost).

But this? This was pretty awesome. Even better than chain lightning arrowheads. “Perfect, Jarvis.” Clint lifted the bow, sighting down to the series of targets on the far side. “Let’s do this.”

Two hours later, Clint had traversed along a whole series of beams to the middle of the room, firing arrow after arrow at targets that were now moving in response to him. A few even shot beams of light back. They were harmless, colliding with is skin with a pretty explosion of light rather than anything remotely painful, but pride came before fireworks and Clint was doing a good job of avoiding most of them.

He was in the process of hunting down one of the ore elusive targets (the damn things evolved—this particular bastard was currently performing hit and run attacks) when Jarvis spoke again, voice raised to be heard over the winds. “Agent Barton, my protocols are being overwritten. Simulation is shutting down in ten seconds.”

“Give me just one…”  The target zoomed by just underneath the beam he was on, and Clint dove for it, loosening his arrow in freefall. The target went down, and he managed to catch hold of the beam directly beneath the one he’d leapt from and swing under and back on top of it to a crouch. “Alright, we’re good here.”

There was a series of beeps, and abruptly everything went still. Clint rocked forward once, nearly overcompensated his weight before he managed to steady himself on the beam again. The room was almost deafeningly silent.

Clint stood up and glanced down to where the doors that led to the elevators were. Just inside, leaning against the side of the door as if he’d been there for the past half-hour was Coulson, hands clasped in front of him and completely relaxed. All he needed was his sunglasses and a suit and he’d look like he did any other day of the week. It sent a fresh spurt of relief-tinged rage through Clint.

“You’re ruining practice hour,” he called down, instead of a sarcastic-tinged barb regarding bed rest.

Coulson shrugged once. “You’ve been up here for nearly three hours, Clint. And before that you spent a few hours jumping off buildings and shooting hostiles.”

“They were wasps, Coulson. Not Chitauri.  Or Hydra, or any other actual threats. It was an angry guy who went a bit maniacal.” Clint stood up on the beam easily. Without the wind, keeping his balance wasn’t even remotely challenging. “So I decided I needed a better workout.”

Coulson’s eyebrows went up. “You needed a three hour workout?” he asked, voice raised to be heard across the open space. He pushed off the wall beside the door and headed into the middle of gargantuan room to where Clint was currently chilling about fifteen feet of the floor

“You’re always saying I need to utilize my resources.” Clint leaned over a bit further and swung off the beam. He hit the ground with enough forward momentum to avoid snapping anything, though he still felt the jolt up his calves.

“I’m also always saying you shouldn’t jump through windows. Especially when you have no idea what’s on the other side of them.” 

Clint rolled his eyes, and disassembled his bow. The case he kept it in was only a few feet away, placed in a locker that had then been sent below ground to avoid the elements that this chamber could produce. “Unknown window, electrocution, or death by gravity.” He tapped the code to bring up the case, then made a show of weighing the options. “Think I’ll take door number one for three hundred, Alex.”

Coulson came to a stop next to him as Clint put his bow away. “So what about punching Jones?”

The earlier fury came back, twice as hard. “That was just for me.” He snapped the case shut with more force than was strictly necessary. “Call it a perk from having worked with him.”

“You’ve worked with him before, Clint. The last time you tried to break your hand.”

It hadn’t been the last time, actually, but there really wasn’t a reason to bring that up now. “See? He just brings out the best in me.”  He reached down and scooped up the case, ready to head for the door. Now that everything was still and calm, he could feel the sweat dripping down his back, no longer swept away by the wind.

Coulson put out a hand to stop him, his fingertips grazing along Clint’s ribs. “And this op didn’t go south any more than the last one did.”

“Not really a conversation I want to have right now, Coulson”

 “You didn’t want to have it then, either. And if it’s the same to you, I’d like to have it before I spend another month in a coma.”

For some reason, that was all it took to push him over the edge. “Fine.” Clint dropped the case and whirled around. “You want to talk? Any particular subject coming to mind, Coulson?”

Clint had always been the taller of the two, by a few inches. Add a pair of combat boots and subtract the height from a pair of slippers and the height discrepancy was even greater. Coulson didn’t even seem to notice. “Feel free to start wherever you’re most comfortable. I’m sure I’ll be able to keep up.”

Then let’s go with the Battle for New York, then. Because that, for all that it was still one of the shittiest things Clint could remember enduring in recent years, was still better than things that happened before. “How about we discuss the fact that everything, my training, earlier missions, all of it was for nothing? That it fell apart because someone tapped me on the chest with a stick? Or maybe how I've basically destroyed any chance of a career path I might have had by talking nonstop about every SHIELD secret there was? I gave up them, I gave up Nat, I even gave up you. Or maybe, we can talk about how you decided to shish kabob yourself for the greater good?”

"That’s a start." Coulson didn't seem ruffled by any of it, just clasped his hands loosely in front of himself again. Coma or no, suit or bathrobe and sweat pants, he still played the role of the calm super-secret field agent faultlessly. "We can also go into why you seem to think we're done" 

That made him wince. "Just preparing for the inevitable," Clint replied, and barely bit back the automatic 'sir' at the end of it. The fact that he hadn’t actually used the epithet since before Coulson went down hit him suddenly, and Christ, was that really an endearment? How fucked up was it that ‘sir’ was a pet-name?

"And that's what you do," it sounded more like a question than a statement. "Start scoping out new places to be, try to find the next job?"

"One perch goes down, you need a backup" it was cruel and nowhere near truthful in this case, but the minute flinch that ran across Coulson's face was almost satisfying. Almost. "I'll need something to do when you're done with me. May as well consider my options."

“When I'm done,” Coulson repeated slowly. “Not when you’ve decided that it’s time to move on, or Fury insists it ends, or when everything just runs its course on its own. When I'm done.”

Fuck. He should have known that eventually Coulson would run it around to this part of the conversation. Clint shrugged again. “Maybe it’s that whole ‘position of power’ thing that companies warn about. You know, how you’re not supposed to date your boss.”

Coulson rolled his eyes. “You are not worried that I might threaten to demote you if you don’t sleep with me, or anything of the sort.” There was actual anger under the words now, a stillness to his movements that warned that he was about to start shouting. “No, this is something different. You don't trust me not to leave you.”

 “It’s not about trust,” Clint clarified, though in all honesty, it may as well be. “It's about priorities. It’s about SHIELD, about how that will always be the first call.” For both of them, though Clint couldn't see much of a point of staying if Coulson were gone. Especially since the number of agents willing to work with him had drastically lowered

_And whose fault was that?_

“And since we were working together, that meant we were living together?” Coulson shook his head. “Clint—“

“It’s not that big a jump,” Clint interrupted before Coulson had a chance to point out just how fucked up that was. “We spend most of our time together on the job. Pretend the Battle of New York never happened, and that you were just part of the Avengers Initiative; how long before I’m reassigned? And when that’s happened, how long before we realize we haven’t seen each other in three weeks, or spoken in two? Do you know why most agents in SHIELD can’t keep a steady relationship? It’s not only because we’re all broken maniacs, Coulson.”

“No,” Coulson agreed. “Although, apparently, we’re filled up with idiots.” Yeah, there was some definite anger going on there.

“Think about it. Our last day off was spent helping Nat prepare her background to infiltrate Stark and then getting rid of the photographer’s body. You know how most people spend their day off? By actually having a day off.”

“First you’ve complained about it.”

“I did the math,” Clint said simply, because having a day off wasn’t the issue here. It was having the day off _together_. But he wasn’t desperate enough to point that out yet. “Eventually, you’re going to realize that we haven’t seen each other in months. And if we have to survive on a phone call relationship, then you may as well cash in now.”

“And yet here we are, still working together.” As if they’d been on some weird undercover mission, not hanging out in a hospital room while Coulson remembered how to breathe again.

“Because I killed half of SHIELD,” Clint yelled, and how the hell could Coulson just simply believe that everything would be alright. “I killed people, and it felt _right_ , like everything Loki said was as true as gravity. And I talked; I talked about everything and everyone. I told them about how we got Natasha, about how I came to SHIELD. I told him about the Initiative, I told him about you.” He’d talked about everything. Clint had no idea how Selvig had managed to work a failsafe into the portal. The only thing that Clint hadn’t done was start sniping people once he’d boarded the Helicarrier. “How is that any better?”

“It isn’t,” Coulson said, and Clint could hear the rage behind his own words. “And I’m not saying that it is. But you want to know what I don’t get? It’s how you get to decide that I’m the one who’s invested less in what we’re doing. Because out of the two of us, I’m not the one who’s decided it’s not working. You even cracked your knuckles because of it.”

“You want more proof? You’re more worried that I nearly ruined an OP—“

“I’m angry because you tried to break your hand instead of telling me what the problem was!” And now Coulson was yelling, hands up in the air as if grasping for something he could use to bean Clint over the head with. “I told you before, I can’t fix it if I don’t know what it is.”

Not one to step away from a fight, even if it was just who could yell louder, Clint stepped forward into his space. “That would have been a great conversation: ‘oh, Coulson, just realized that we’re probably breaking up soon, let me know when you realize it too’. I could have passed a note—check the left box if you want to hang on until it’s really awkward, or check the right box if you think that cutting your losses early is the best route.”

“Or maybe,” Coulson didn’t step away, didn’t back down at all. Instead, he tipped his chin back and me him glare for glare. “Maybe I would have told you to stop being an idiot about the whole thing.”

“It’s not stupid if it makes sense, Coulson! Do you realize how much we belong to SHIELD? I don’t even call you by your first name—hell, I’m just happy I don’t call you ‘Agent’ in bed!” Clint stepped back, and threw his hands up. “So what exactly is there left to talk about, Coulson? It was going to end when the Avengers Initiative took off, it’ll end soon enough when SHIELD dumps me because not only do I not ‘play well with others,’ but apparently I kill them if someone taps me with a stick.” He glared, and realized that Coulson wasn’t saying anything, wasn’t yelling or using the irritated, overly stern tone he got when the junior agents fucked something up. Instead, he was looking with Clint with something akin to faint horror and maybe the smallest amount of pity.

And once again, Clint couldn’t stand to see it go through. “So you tell me how it’s stupid,” he said, rather than finally ending it or letting Coulson do it. Instead, he did the one thing that he’d proven, time and time again, that he was best at.

He turned, and walked out the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah, that took forever. I tried to keep the style and characters the same, but if it came out weird then I have no excuse. 
> 
> On that note- I'm not sure how much longer this will end up being. I also don't know if I'm going to actually include the reason for Coulson's recovery here, or wait and maybe do a small side story. Or just leave it open ended. Who knows?
> 
> If you've stuck with me this long, I'd like to thank you. Seriously, there's no reason I didn't have this done sooner. Thank you so much, and please feel free to comment on this chapter.


End file.
